


Hotel Continental (California)

by Guede



Category: John Wick (Movies), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Amorality, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Behind the Scenes, Blow Jobs, F/M, Frottage, Gallows Humor, Hand Jobs, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Incest, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Oblivious Stiles, Polyamory, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Sibling Bonding, Stiles Works Too Hard, Voyeurism, Workplace Comedy, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-07 09:20:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 75,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12838125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Working at the Continental SF sucks.Well, fine, it doesn’t actually suck.  Stiles gets to live rent-free in a glamorous hotel with every possible legal luxury plus a ton of illegal ones, high-rolling it as only somebody deeply embedded in the shadowy, secretive, dangerous world of assassins and hitmen can be.  He’s not going to pretend it isn’t cool as fuck, because it is.  Cool.It’s also full of a lot of late nights where he has to assess stains of dubious to regretfully certain origins and make a call about whether it’s even worth trying to steam-clean that or whether they’re just going to have to strip the carpet and redo the whole room.  Sure, yeah, mercs prepay.  They’re obliging like that, and he never has to worry about cashflow issues.  But they’re still just—justmessy.Note:NoJohn Wickcharacters show up, although some are mentioned.  I'm just using the setting.





	1. Stiles

Working at the Continental SF sucks.

Well, fine, it doesn’t actually suck. Stiles gets to live rent-free in a glamorous hotel with every possible legal luxury plus a ton of illegal ones, high-rolling it as only somebody deeply embedded in the shadowy, secretive, dangerous world of assassins and hitmen can be. He’s not going to pretend it isn’t cool as fuck, because it is. Cool.

It’s also full of a lot of late nights where he has to assess stains of dubious to regretfully certain origins and make a call about whether it’s even worth trying to steam-clean that or whether they’re just going to have to strip the carpet and redo the whole room. Sure, yeah, mercs prepay. They’re obliging like that, and he never has to worry about cashflow issues. But they’re still just—just _messy_.

“The carpet is supposed to coordinate with the couch and that’s a write-off anyway,” Erica points out to him.

Stiles puts his hand back over his face. “Yeah, I know, I just—we literally have two magnum suites left now, okay? Two. _Two_. And it’s close of quarter, you know what that means, we’re gonna have all the high-maintenance guys flying in clearing out bad investments and we’re the fucking _Continental_ , we make it happen for you but even we can literally only install carpet so fucking fast. I mean. You know?”

Erica slurps at her espresso, then blinks dramatically at him. “Hmm? Yeah, got it, boss, getting the order in right away.”

“I’m just saying!” Stiles says as she shoulders by him and sashays her perky, absolutely disrespectfully uncaring butt down towards the waiting repair crew. “We’re gonna have to downgrade people’s reservations! It’s not good for our reviews!”

“Oh, my God, nobody counts the anonymous ones, those are instant red flags for trolls, and that’s the only kind our clients leave,” she hollers back, flapping one hand over her shoulder. Then she spins around and snaps her fingers at him. “Hey! You’re covering reception for morning shift, remember? Love you so much, thanks, Boyd and I’ll bring you back something!”

Stiles is not covering morning shift. Stiles is the goddamn head of ops of this rolling clusterfuck (tastefully decorated in Old-World elegance, sure, but that’s still what it is) and he has more important things to do than cover the reception desk, like track down the asshole who fucked up this suite plus the whole booking plan for the next week and explain with extreme prejudice what “no business inside hotel premises” means. Stiles specifically shifted into this industry because the Continental staff is a legendary well-oiled, ultra-loyal machine, always acting with a single purpose: to provide the absolute best service with absolute discretion.

* * *

Four hours later, Stiles is manning the stupid reception desk. He did mention Erica to the hotel GM, to which his father said, “Son, those two pulled double shifts twice last week on top of cancelling the Perceval account. Plus, they put in the PTO request fourteen days in advance, unlike _some_ people around here.” Which…okay, Stiles can’t argue with that (although he can point out that he’s never putting in for PTO, he puts in for business trips and it’s not his fault that short notice is pretty much how their line of work goes).

He can, however, resentfully push around room assignments while waiting for his security team to get back to him on where the hell their ghoster from earlier took their rules-breaking, bill-skipping ass off to (because the prepaid deposit doesn’t even cover the _bathroom_ , let alone the bedroom carpet). Erica’s supposed to be back for evening shift and that’s when the majority of their guests check in, so she can figure out how to accommodate a request for a downtown view when—

“Excuse me, can we just get our rooms already? You can play Angry Birds some other time.”

Stiles looks up. Two bloodied, bruised men are standing in front of the desk. The one who spoke has a mud-smeared rifle carry-case slung over his shoulder and East Coast elitist written all over the tattered skin-fit leather glove on the fingers he’s tapping against the marble. The other, older one is toting a battered briefcase and is at least familiar enough with the West Coast to be drinking coffee from somewhere besides Starbucks. 

“Right, the Hales,” Stiles says, pulling up their booking on his screen. “Connected suite, your lunch will be waiting inside by the time you get there, and as a matter of fact, we did have an opening with the gunsmith come up last-minute, so if you still—”

“Unfortunately, that would be a waste of everyone’s time,” sighs Peter Hale. He puts his coffee down and takes a second to wipe his fingers with a tissue before counting out three gold coins. “We’ll just order replacements off the room service menu and—oh, but come to think of it, if you happen to have an opening with the tailor—”

Derek twists around and looks at Peter as if the man—his uncle, per the client file—had just taken his most prized possession and set it on fire. “Listen, if _you_ thought you had time to make the shot before the tank burst—”

Peter presses his lips together. Then twitches them into an absentminded attempt at an apologetic smile at Stile, which barely lasts the second before he flicks into disgusted and glowers at Derek. “Could you possibly, just possibly, let us check in and shower and resemble something remotely human before you start rehashing your latest fuck-up?”

The lobby behind them is pretty empty, just the valet standing right outside the doors and somebody reading obituaries on the computer in the business center off the left side, but just in case, Stiles checks the planned arrivals list. Nobody’s expected for the next hour, so he tees up the Hales’ room, then reviews prior purchases on the account and shoots off a message to the armory to get ready on the handgun stocks. Then, what the hell, Peter’s got a good record for tipping in his guest file, Stiles goes ahead and squeezes him in for a suit fitting.

“I’m just saying, Laura and Mom both said this is exactly why we don’t take those anymore,” Derek is muttering, rubbing mud all through his hair and then down the side of his neck as he pushes at it to pop his spine.

“And yet, here we are, working that godforsaken hellhole because _someone_ couldn’t be bothered to properly ditch a burner phone,” Peter snaps. “Listen, Derek, your mother might think that’s within an acceptable margin of error but—”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Do you always have to bring up Mom? You’re the one who blew our last bonus opening an account on her latest ex, as if people don’t already think we’re all way too close and—”

Stiles looks over the screen one more time to make sure that everything is set for getting these two out of the lobby and that’s when a small green flash to the side attracts his attention. He picks up his phone, flicks over the emergency warning, and then tosses it aside and ducks under the desk.

When he comes back up, Derek and Peter shut up and stare at the business end of the railgun he’s holding. Give him credit, Peter blinks just once and then looks offended. “I am in the middle of paying right _now_.”

“Yep, I see that, so duck, okay?” Stiles says.

Derek ducks. Peter whirls sideways to get out of the way and turn around to see, and he’s pulling out a very respectable Luger model when Stiles’ bolt catches the body-armor-clad attacker running into the lobby mid-chest, spinning them back into one of the party-size beanbags. They topple over before even hitting the fair-trade, cruelty-free, handmade on Smithsonian-quality antique looms rug, and Stiles raises his fist for a victory pump and…

Then the attacker’s assault rifle goes off, spraying bullets right into the specially-commissioned one-of-a-kind chandelier of beachglass and reclaimed Russian-farmhouse wood. The chandelier cants dangerously on its chain. The valet rushes in, staff-issue Desert Eagle first, and at least has the brains to shoot the assault rifle so it smacks over and fires into the side paneling, which is only really expensive cellulose-based biomaterial, after all. Since sustainability is important, and also, not a bad cover for the unusually high number of shipments they send to the local dump.

“Sorry! Sorry! I got stuck trying to start his car and he just ran in past me! I thought he was still dressed from work!” Scott shouts, backing up as the rifle spits out one last round, then _clunks_ on an audible jam. He holsters the handgun and fumbles out what looks like a tranquilizer dart. “I’ll—”

The chandelier falls on the attacker, whose feet kick up spastically and then flop against the side of the beanbag. Scott, eyes wide, steps backward…and slips on the pellets spilling out of the bag. He does catch himself before he falls completely over, but has to stagger to the nearest column before he can right himself enough to pull out his phone. And then he trips again, because, Scott being Scott, he can’t help but try to brush up the pellets with one foot while calling for housekeeping and he is really, really not a multitasker.

“I’ll get the slipping hazard signs!” he calls over.

Stiles puts the railgun down to the side. Then puts his elbows on the counter and rests his face in his hands for a second. 

Somebody clears their throat.

“Oh, yeah, here are the keys,” Stiles mutters, grabbing them and then sliding them across the counter without looking up. “Wifi password is in the folio on the desk, dial ‘1’ for housekeeping, ‘2’ for specialty cleaning, ‘3’ for custom service appointments, and ‘4’ for anything else. Please remember that any nonstandard ammunition orders need to be in by eight every night in order to ensure morning delivery. Have a great stay, and rest assured we’ll deal with the breach of house rules.”

“Okay,” says Derek.

“I…thank you. Yes, noted,” says Peter.

Then they walk off—nope, two steps and that’s a scuffing swivel.

“The railg—” Peter starts.

“You can find it under the field artillery section, or our sommelier would be happy to walk you through the full menu, thank you very much and enjoy our services,” Stiles says as politely as is possible while willing them to just _go_ so he can deal with this shitshow already. Jesus Christ, he’s never covering for Erica again.

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Peter says, and hallelujah, this time he and Derek make it all the way into the elevator.

When it pings, Stiles drags his head up. He looks at Scott, who makes sympathetic hand-movements while the first-responder cleaning crew vacuum up pellets and sprinkle biohazardous fluids clotting powder around him. Then he sighs, picks up his phone, and calls security.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fall has been terrible on my free time (not sure what's worse, unplanned unfun travel or wonky computers). Anyway, I've been tossing around a TW/ _Wick_ fusion [forever](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6059890/chapters/19485703), and finally figured out that as much as I love the stately style of the _Wick_ universe, that's just not how I see Stiles' sense of humor. Or his workaholic attitude. Or how I tend to get caught up in figuring out the work-shifts and profit margins and supply chains for things like hitmen-only hotels.
> 
> Reclaimed wood from Russian farmhouses is an actual [Restoration Hardware furniture line](https://www.restorationhardware.com/catalog/category/products.jsp?categoryId=cat1990015).
> 
> Perceval does refer to _Atomic Blonde_ , which had something off about it I couldn't quite put my finger on (it wasn't edited right but I can't pinpoint where it went wrong), but which still deserves cult status.


	2. Stiles

“Why do I always get stuck with the boring shift?” Erica wonders, when she’s back later that night.

“Same reason I get stuck with the shifts with the idiots who don’t seem to understand we actually enforce the membership code and it really, _really_ doesn’t matter what kind of covert military backing you have,” Stiles says, snapping on his gloves.

She’s giving him a Look. He ignores it and just keeps handing her clips until she rolls her eyes and packs up, and then they stalk into the woods (because look, parks with picturesque Gilded-Age sculpture are all very Gothic and all but what works for the East Coast is completely unnecessary when you have actual wilderness to actually disappear asshole rule-breaking bodies into). One short reminder of the whole _point_ of the Continental system later, Stiles stalks back out to their SUV for the back-up shovel, because obviously, on top of everything else, he’s gotta have a loose handle into the bargain, only to find…

“We didn’t kill anybody,” says one Derek Hale, experienced hitman, standing on a little-used backwoods road in the dark with dark clothing on.

Stiles looks at him.

Derek sighs. “I’m just saying we aren’t horning in on your job.”

“Okay,” Stiles says after a moment. “I…appreciate that.”

They stare at each other some more. Derek seems to be one of those hitmen who prefer to have the other person handle the conversation, and while that normally is in Stiles’ job description, Stiles is standing in the woods with a corpse thirty yards behind him and two weeks’ worth of invoices to catch up on back at the hotel. He’s only got so much hospitality to go around.

“Look, about that in the lobby,” Derek finally says. “We—that did have something to do with somebody we did, and—”

“Emphasis on the past tense, and listen, it’s all taken care of, you may rest assured that the hotel management takes breaches of conduct with extreme seriousness,” Stiles says stiffly. Okay, so you’re a dead hitman if you’re not paranoid. But there’s a difference between paranoia and mistrust, and at the end of the day, the reason the Continental exists is because it’s earned that right and basically, now Stiles is worrying about the hotel’s reputation. Goddamn it. “So no, all loose ends are being knotted off as we speak, we have taken care of it and you don’t need to—”

“Hey, would you let me finish?” Derek says irritably. “I’m trying to say—”

Stiles mentally reviews Derek’s file again: according to it, Derek was pretty much raised in his line of work, so why he’s being such a noob is beyond Stiles. “And I’m trying to say Management doesn’t need to know, okay? That’s how—that’s what the Continental is about. You do your business elsewhere, and at the end of the day, you come back and we provide you with a no-questions-asked retreat.”

“Well, fine, I just thought you’d want to know why your lobby got shot up,” Derek says, still irritated.

“But I don’t,” Stiles says. He gives the other man another second, then goes back to patting himself down till he finds the pocket with the car keys. “So…I’m not sure why you’re out here, but it really shouldn’t have anything to do with me just enforcing the rules like I’d do with any other guest.”

A snort slips out of Derek, and then he does this loose, sideways swagger so that he can keep out of the easy sightlines as Stiles opens up the back of the SUV. It’s the kind of thing that really, only Hollywood-glam antiheroes with manly stubble and a granite jawline can really carry off without looking like they have a small animal crawling up and down their jeans. “Right, with the railgun and all. In New York they just escort you off the premises.”

The type of people who patronize the Continental are not, generally speaking, the sentimental type, which means Stiles can usually count on them to behave like adults with a vested interest in not being petty. Usually. “Well, Mr. Hale, this is the _West_ Coast. We have a little more space around here so if we shoot something, we don’t have to worry about hitting the next three neighbors.”

Derek frowns, then shakes his head. For a second he looks sort of embarrassed, under the irritation. “I didn’t mean we minded or anything,” he says. “I just—it was a nice touch. Even if you were going to do it anyway, and we’re nothing special. You did hear about what went down with Perkins, right? She got caught at it, then got loose and killed somebody else right in there before security got up there.”

“Yeah, we heard about it,” Stiles says. Neutrally. Officially, it’s a collective black eye when anybody breaks the rules at any of the Continental establishments, even if behind the scenes, there’s some healthy speculation about what the hell the on-floor security was doing to take that long and also seriously, not having sensors to detect snipers in neighboring buildings? Or bulletproof glass? But New York, hey, it’s a legend in its own right. Never mind that it’s not actually reassuring to your guests if they get revenged when they’re _in the morgue_. “But I can’t—anyway, thanks, we’re glad that you’re satisfied with our level of service.”

Never mind, Derek’s not embarrassed about a damn thing, says the slight sneering curl of his upper lip. “Do you always talk like a marketing post?”

Stiles almost says something bitchy. Almost. But he is a fucking professional, even if Derek isn’t, and no matter how the guest is behaving, so long as they aren’t breaking the rules, he will serve them with dignity and respect (while sticking his head in the car so that he can flip off the gear stowed in the back where Derek can’t see). “Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr. Hale? Do you need car service?” 

“No, I’m fine,” Derek says. He’s not, says the ticked-off angle of his eyebrow. “But you might want to park yours somewhere you’re not going to get ticketed, you know.”

Stiles stops flipping off the digging tools. Then he pulls his head out of the car and turns around.

Derek fiddles in his jacket pockets, then pulls out a slightly crumpled sheet of paper, which he hands to Stiles.

“This is a temporary hunting permit,” Stiles says after reading it.

“Oh, yeah, that’s—right, not a ticket. Permit.” Then Derek shrugs. “Anyway, you still need it to park around here. They were going to tow the car if you didn’t have one.”

“They wha—” Stiles spins around and scans either side of the road, then spins back and stares at his car. He looks at the paper again, only now noticing the California Department of Parks and Recreation seal at the top. “Since when? This is supposed to be private land!”

When he looks at Derek, Derek frowns as if Stiles is crazy for looking at him like he should know and…Derek’s kind of right. Seeing as Derek shouldn’t know. Derek is a guest, and guests are supposed to sit back and partake of the hotel’s comprehensive slate of services and are not, under any circumstances, supposed to feel as if they need to call upon their professional skill set while upon hotel premises. Which they currently aren’t but fuck technicalities and Stiles—Stiles—Stiles nods. Puts the paper in his pocket. Turns back to the SUV and picks out a shovel and then shuts the back and nods to Derek again. “Yes. Right. Thank you very much, Mr. Hale. We’ll take it from here, don’t worry about it. Oh, and about getting you a car…”

Derek frowns again, slightly less confused and slightly more bemused, and then shakes his head as he takes out his phone. “I’m good, Peter’s bringing ours back. He is running late, but he always does that when we’re working.”

“Right. Okay.” Perfect, Stiles thinks. On the one hand, he should feel better that Derek at least isn’t out here just to stalk him, but on the other…not only are his guests checking up on him, they’re doing it on their _break_. Ow times infinity. “Is there anything else that we can provide you with?”

“I…no, I think we’re okay,” Derek says, looking up from his phone. He sounds distracted or something, and when Stiles starts walking off towards the trees, he twists a little like he might follow. “Hey. So even if you don’t want to know what hap—”

“Management is handling it, Mr. Hale,” Stiles says. He pulls out a shovel and checks that this one’s handle won’t come loose on him. Totally explains the white-knuckled grip.

“Yeah, you only said about a hundred times. Also can you stop calling me Mr. Hale, I’m pretty sure you know what my first name is—”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Stiles snaps, and sharply enough that Derek goes still in that way common to all Continental members, where they’re mentally cataloging how much spare ammunition they have. Stiles just stops himself from wincing in front of the man, then takes a deep breath, mentally chants through the oath of service, and then smiles as professionally as he can at Derek. “For your patronage, Mr. Hale. The Continental is, as always, here to serve our guests.”

Derek looks extremely dubious about this. Which, given the evidence of the past twenty-four hours, Stiles really can’t blame him for. But he finally gives up on whatever he’d been trying to say and lets Stiles go, and when Stiles and Erica come out of the woods again after tidying up, he’s no longer there.

* * *

“You know, there is some gossip that the current generation of Hales isn’t so enamored of the family trade,” Lydia says as she scans the three monitors before her. “And I’m starting to believe it, if they’re careless enough to pay off a state agency in person.”

“Hey, he still used cash and gave a fake ID, and we were in bumfuck nowhere, it’s not like anybody around there was gonna take a coin,” Erica says, handing over the rest of her and Stiles’ expense receipts for the trip. “Personally, I think if we’re gonna diss people for incompetence, we should diss whoever the hell didn’t update the system so we ended up booking a _state park_ for our meeting.”

The two of them look at each other, and while Lydia’s stare legitimately drills holes through solid steel, that throwaway smile of Erica’s has an entire chapter devoted to it in their recruitment screening manual. Then Lydia lifts one hand, never looking away, and extends one finger to tap a blood-red, super-shiny nail on the screen that is currently displaying a huge blinking reminder for an exit interview tomorrow.

Erica tilts her head. “Hah, like that’s a surprise. Those East Coast transfers never work out.”

“You credited back the permit cost to their account, right?” Stiles says.

It takes him a while to notice how silent it’s gotten, mostly because he’s now on his third shift thanks to having to track down and deal with the assholes who’d sent the jackass who broke his lobby, and so he’s only now just getting to all of the _actual_ work involved in running a hotel, like checking special guest requests and tracking billing and going over future bookings. So okay, he’s kind of frustrated at the moment. So still, it’s out of a deep-seated desire to protect and burnish their particular outpost of the Continental’s reputation, so he really, truly does not think he deserves that death-eye. From either of them.

“Yes, it’s been handled,” Lydia finally says, still staring at him. “I’ve also had a binder of obituaries sent up with the Hales’ dinner service, to deal with their interest in the issue. And took the liberty of telling your f—”

Stiles can’t help a groan as he pitches forward. Then jerks back up, hating himself, because sure, right, running an old-fashioned gold economy is actually a fantastic way to opt out of today’s omniscient Big Data tracking, but the little coin stacks hit his face a hell of a lot harder than paper bills. Or a computer keyboard, and shit, on top of that, he still needs to make the trip over to their money launderer, because gold coins look cool as shit but eventually you need to convert that back to something the rest of the world is going to accept. 

“He was really cool about it,” Erica says, in what he thinks is supposed to be a sympathetic tone. It’s somewhat hard to tell since she’s grabbed his chin and is poking at the sore spots on his face. “Just said, ‘shit, again? Did my kid—hell, of course he’s on it, okay, thanks, just tell him I’ll take the next shift.’ Which means—”

“He can’t take this shift, he’s already on this shift,” Stiles says, shoving her off. When she paws after him, looking miffed, he scoots his chair around the end of the desk to put that between them. “He’s got that arms dealer reunion to coordinate, he’s locked up in the south conference rooms for the next twelve hours. So listen, while I really appreciate you taking the initiative here and updating Dad, I really gotta be—”

He went the wrong way. Left moves him around the desk towards the door and his car keys and service holster. Right moves him around it towards the door, but the wrong door—it’s the door to the inner office, which is wide-open, because Lydia’s flanked him and is holding it when Scott appears from nowhere and flips the lever so the chair tips Stiles backwards out of it and onto the unfolded couch-bed they keep back there.

“You gotta sleep sometime,” Scott says, looking very apologetic about this. “It’s okay, we’ll keep it running.”

“But they _broke the rules_ , Scott, I _have_ to—”

“I’m on it. Sleep,” Lydia says crisply, shutting the door in Stiles’ face.

Stiles stares at it for a good minute, while on the other side, there is shuffling and whispering and then Erica loudly telling him that Boyd is going to bring him something to eat in an hour and will totally headlock him if he tries to bolt for it. Then the shuffling moves away, and he hears the outer door open and close a couple of times.

Sighing, Stiles flops backward. Then he—no, his pocket’s empty when he checks. Erica must have pickpocketed his phone when Scott was doing his magic with the chair. And the—no, ceiling vents have been freshly reinforced when Stiles gets up and checks them. And yep, office has been denuded of useful tools. Assholes.

Fine. He’s just going to lie here and finish up his plans to redo the lobby, and when Lydia complains about the excessive killer robots, it’ll be her own damn fault.

* * *

Four hours, a meal, and one admittedly refreshing nap later, they let Stiles out. Lydia sits down with him and goes over the final reports on the team that’d been after the Hales, their fates, and the general reaction within the industry to that.

“Of course, there’ll always be a few fools who think it’s better to be absolutely identical in every environment and they’re putting out the usual comments about this not being how New York would handle it, but Winston’s not sanctioning any of that,” Lydia says, with a contemptuous flick of her hair over one shoulder. “I think we’re fine.”

“Great,” Stiles says.

Lydia glances at her phone, frowns, and then reaches over to tap at her computer. Then she looks back at Stiles. “They’re all dead, Stiles.”

“Awesome,” Stiles says.

She presses her lips together. “The Hales checked out while you were indisposed. They left a larger than normal tip in the room, and also were confused by the bill at first. Boyd explained about the permit credit and they wanted it taken off but he managed to convince them they were going to miss their flight if they kept arguing.”

“Sounds good,” Stiles says.

“Oh, for—you realize at this point that those people barely even knew about the Continental and they didn’t do it just to ruin your life, don’t you?” Lydia finally snaps.

“I—” Stiles starts.

Lydia holds up a dossier. And then another dossier. And then an external hard drive, at an angle that suggests if the right thing doesn’t come out of his mouth, she’s going to pitch it at his head. Considering that they’ve got a full house tonight and a Cold War group reunion booking the rooftop lounge, he kind of needs her on his side, so he nods enthusiastically and keeps his mouth shut.

Her eyes narrow suspiciously, but she puts down the hard drive and pulls over her laptop instead. “Well, now that _that_ unpleasantness is finally settled, shall we review the laundry reports for the week?”

“Absolutely,” Stile says. “You know nothing gets me more excited than forensic stats on probable stain origins.”

That’s probably overselling it, but then, Lydia’s reaction is to just roll her eyes and shove him the catering orders, too, so they should be okay. Back to business as usual.

* * *

The Hale issue is thoroughly settled at this point, unless one of the so-covert-they’re-billed-under-backup-trash-vendors government agencies has figured out how to make necromancy a go. Besides, like Lydia said, that was just a rare blip where newbies decided that code of conduct couldn’t really be enforceable, right? Because c’mon, rule of cool and how cool is a demilitarized zone?

Whatever, it’s over with, and now Stiles at least has an excuse to dig himself out of routine event-hosting for the much more fun process of upgrading the lobby. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with reclaimed wood, we still totally uphold our commitment to sustainability, but there’s no reason why we have to stick with the upscale beach resort aesthetic, right?”

Scott looks unconvinced, although when Stiles hands him back the preliminary architectural design, he does his best to ditch that for an encouraging smile. “I think it looks nice. It’ll…it’ll, um, match the carpet. And, um, they say it’ll be a lot easier to install the microcameras.”

Got to give him credit for always trying. “All right, I’m good here,” Stiles says, clapping his hand on Scott’s shoulder. “I don’t need to distract you from your actual job anymore, you can go ahead and—”

“Hey,” Boyd says.

Stiles and Scott both jump and twist around. Boyd might not have the preferred posh English accent of a Continental concierge, but he has the expressionlessly unimpressed face down _cold_. Even before Stiles lowers it, he swears that his gun muzzle’s cringing.

“Something wrong?” Scott says, peering around Boyd at the otherwise empty lobby.

Boyd points one finger at the ceiling. “Got a call from catering. Somebody tried to suit up as a spare runner and dust a special order with peanut powder—”

That’s all Stiles needs to hear, and ten minutes later he is upstairs and standing in a back hallway, staring at a moving dot on a tablet while Scott and the nearest on-call medic check over a concussed waiter. “Oh, come on,” Stiles mutters, stabbing and swiping with his finger to close the fire doors. “Don’t tell me you actually thought you were gonna kill somebody by anaphylaxis _in_ my hotel and—seriously? Seriously? The garbage chute? As in the thing that runs right into our fully-equipped _waste disposal environment_?”

“Okay, let me know as soon as you have the skull scans back,” Scott says, waving off the stretcher. “I think they’ll be all right eventually, but that looked like a pretty bad hit.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll authorize extra paid sick leave and I already texted Lydia to open an account on the asshole who ordered it,” Stiles says. He almost loses the dot as it takes an unexpected lunge back into the chute, but by then teams are on both the basement and the floor above it, and the one stuffs dirty sheets into the chute to block it while the other catches at the other end. “She’s gonna be really annoyed about having to up the holdback this month to cover the doctors.”

Scott radiates discomfort. “Well, but—”

“Oh, not because we don’t want to pay out well-earned benefits to our staff, Scotty, come on,” Stiles says, poking away the notification. Then he looks up at the other man. “Because that’s _two_ idiots in one month who’ve decided to hell with the rules. What’s up with that anyway, do people not understand what they’re signing up for when we require mandatory blood samples and a hundred-coin deposit with the membership application?”

“Maybe we should send out a reminder?” Scott suggests.

Stiles loves the guy, he really does, and he loves how, no matter how many homicides there are going to be, Scott does his level best to try and find a better way. But for a message to stick, you have to understand your audience, and while Scott’s surprisingly good with blunt instruments, he really isn’t much good at that part of job. Which is why they keep him away from the enforcement side of the business whenever possible.

“Hey, so can you handle clean-up here and make sure they remember to comp that replacement meal?” Stiles says. “Security wants me on twelve.” 

Scott assures Stiles that that comp meal is going to go out with absolutely no allergens in it. Stiles thanks the man, puts that out of his head, and trots himself up to twelve where they’ve detained the moron who decided to pay somebody to carry out a hit on Continental premises _while_ staying there. At least the numbskull after the Hales arguably started in the parking lot and just forgot to hit his brakes.

The moron is also stubborn. An hour later, Stiles steps out into the hall, more annoyed than ever. So annoyed, in fact, that he almost pulls on the poor cleaner who tries to hand him a freshly-popped face-wipe. He makes a face at himself, resettles his gun in its holster, and takes the wipe with a weak smile. Then moves off to the side so that the crew can file into the room and change out the plastic.

“Oh, is this off-limits?” says somebody.

Stiles accidentally squeezes the wipe so that its pre-soaked cleaning fluid gets into his eye. He hisses and rubs at the sting, then takes down his hand and realizes he just got blood all over the side of his face that he’d cleaned off. Then he just—he just does _not_ drop his head back and stare at the ceiling and blow out his breath, because that is not a staff member talking to him, that is a guest, and he is a damned _hospitality professional_. Even if he looks like shit.

“We’re just redoing the room, but you can go ahead and pass through the hall if you need to,” he says, plastering a friendly smile on his face and turning to…he blinks. “Wait, you checked out.”

“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come back, does it?” Peter Hale says in a faintly puzzled tone, as if assassins routinely change their travel plans at the last—okay, actually, they do that, that could be plausible. And he’s cleaned up since Stiles saw him last—ugh, of course he did, it’s been over twenty-four hours and for a second Stiles both wants to keep looking and wants to toss coffee over Peter for making him feel even grimier. Stiles needs to focus on something else: fine, Peter’s holding a cardboard tray full of what smells like coffee, the cups branded with the logo of a local microroast shop. “I’m meeting someone in the observatory lounge.”

“Right, yeah, that’s on this flo—right. Yep.” Stiles resists the urge to smack himself in the face, which is just going to get more blood all over himself and really, what the hell is Peter staring at? It’s not like the scene should be new to the guy. “Sorry, you just sur—I mean, let me get out of your way.”

So he moves over, but before Peter can walk past, one of the cleaners pops out again. “What do you want us to do with the fingers?”

Peter’s brows go up and why is Stiles even looking that way anyway, he needs to handle this. “Just—they’re in something, can’t you just move it to the bathroom until you’re done?” he mutters.

“It’s just you said you wanted all the decorative things swapped out,” Parrish says. Pause. “They’re in the fruit bowl?”

“Oh—fine, move them to the ice bucket, okay? I just couldn’t reach that and hold onto the clippers at the same time,” Stiles hisses. “And hurry up, would you? The rooms on either side are supposed to be checked in by six and both of them are coming off trans-Pacific flights, they’re going to want quiet.”

Parrish flaps him a lazy salute through the hazmat suit and Stiles rolls his eyes. Then remembers he’s got a guest waiting on him. Shit.

“Difficult guest?” Peter says. His brows are still a little arched, but he mostly doesn’t look like he’s about to fly back to New York and loudly announce in the Continental there that he’s never staying at the NorCal branch again.

“Management has it in hand,” Stiles says, smiling as competently as he can. “Rest assured, the code of conduct is strictly enforced.”

“Oh, I see that,” Peter says, his eyes moving over Stiles again, following a smear of blood down Stiles’ cheek and neck and it’s starting to dry and Peter staring at it reminds Stiles that means it’s getting itchy. “Do you have a dairy allergy?”

Stiles twitches. “Excuse me?” he snaps.

Peter pauses, and while he doesn’t exactly retreat, that definitely wasn’t the reaction he was looking for. When he answers, his gaze sticks right on Stiles’ eyes, no wandering. “I had a drop-out for my meeting, so I have a spare here, and you look as if you could use some refreshment,” he says, in a neutral tone. He wiggles the cardboard tray. “Black or latte?”

“I’m—um, I mean, thanks, but I’m good,” Stiles says.

“Really?” Peter says, and he might be sliding a little… _something_ into his voice. His file does say that he handles the intel-gathering side of things, and the code of conduct specifically prohibits invasions of privacy from the _guest_ side (hey, credit checks and all that, they are running a business here). “Well, I’m just going to throw the extra out otherwise, and I just thought—since you took the trouble to credit us back for that permit—”

“Because that was covering me when I was covering off on a breach of the rules and it’s my _job_ to make sure my guests are okay,” Stiles says, putting a little edge in his voice and hoping Peter just takes the hint. Since bloodstains obviously aren’t going to do it for an assassin. “I’m—”

The moron moans something, which while not completely coherent, is clearly not cooperative. Stiles winces, and then again when Parrish attempts to shut up the moron and instead just gets an angrier moan. Then he takes a deep breath and lifts his head to send Peter on his way—only to have something shoved into his hand. It immediately starts to slip and he grabs at it, cursing, and by then Peter’s eased past him and is ambling down the other end of the hall.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with the house coffee, mind you,” Peter calls back. “I just like a good American roast once in a while.”

As a matter of fact, so does Stiles. But their clientele is used to European touches, so they stock French- and Italian-style roasts by default. Which…doesn’t mean Stiles can’t drink it. But if he drinks it, he’ll be—he’ll be—something will be violated, he’s pretty sure, and he can’t figure out exactly what that is right now because he’s kind of got his hands full. So he goes back into the room and sets the coffee down on a handy piece of furniture to think about later.

An hour later, he’s on his way out for another break when he spots the coffee still sitting there. He winces, then sighs and picks it up, and steps out to see if he can still catch the last cleaner hauling off dirty laundry.

“Well, well, what impeccable timing,” Peter says, strolling up. Stiles still looks like a blood bag had babies on him and Peter still looks like somebody swiped him off a magazine cover, the edition where they decided to combine tailored suits and subliminal porn. Though this time he has a waxed-paper bag emblazoned with the logo of a tiny bakery two blocks away, which is a favorite staff spot (and not _just_ because the bakers will sell at four A.M. to anybody who knocks at the back door, okay, you don’t earn Continental staff business unless you’re perfect at your job).

Stiles stops where he is. He listens for the door to click shut behind him, then looks at Peter. “Who have you been talking to,” he says flatly.

Peter slows down and also starts to circle wide of Stiles, taking up a precautionary position by the nearest alcove. “Pardon?” he says.

“The coffee and the food,” Stiles says, and then remembers their respective positions. Even Peter doesn’t have a current booking, the man’s still got membership and Stiles should be treating him accordingly, even if it annoys the hell out of him when guests start to think that the Continental’s just another due diligence target. That, unfortunately, is not against the rules (neither is looking perfect while Stiles has itchy dried-blood flakes in his pants and damn it, Stiles needs to stop thinking about both of those). “I mean, I’m sorry, were you looking for me for some reason? Did you want to submit a complaint, or discuss any other issue with your last stay here?”

“Of course not,” Peter says, sharply enough to signal Stiles has taken him off-guard.

And then he doesn’t immediately come up with a way to change the conversation and Stiles is still eyeing the bag in his hand (it smells delicious and while people have not exactly been murdered for the bakery’s pain au chocolat, they’ve definitely had their end of life date moved up in order to sync with when those pans come out of the oven), and it suddenly occurs to Stiles to add a couple things together. Namely, prices. “Are you really trying to pay me back for a permit you didn’t have to pay for in the first place?”

“No, I’m merely expressing my appreciation,” Peter says, as he apparently recovers quicker when he’s responding to sarcasm. He even manages to tamp down the wariness enough so that the angle of his shoulders towards Stiles projects a deep and thorough interest in Stiles’ personal space bubble, and puncturing thereof. “I am aware that you have objections to a guest doing so, but I don’t believe there’s anything inappropriate about providing positive feedback. You even have forms requesting it in every room.”

“That doesn’t really look like a form,” Stiles says, nodding at the bag. “Also, the guest comments form is for all kinds, not just positive.

For a second, Stiles thinks that the man might give up and leave, but…no, Peter’s just reassessing. “We’re not trying to bribe you, Stiles,” Peter says, with a disarming chuckle that doesn’t gloss over the intentness in his gaze. “For one, I think there’d have to be something left to bribe you to _do_ , and you were as thorough as I’d hope to be myself.”

“I’m—” Stiles jerks as his phone buzzes and maybe it’s the grind of interrogation, but by the time he’s settled again, he’s lost his train of thought “—um, I, right. Well, you’re welcome, all right?”

“All right,” Peter says. He glances down at the bag, then sighs as if he might just write that one off—but then he looks back up at Stiles. “Difficult day?”

Stiles shrugs before he can help himself. “Nothing to do with you, so far as I can tell,” he hastily adds. His phone buzzes again and he makes a face as he pulls it out: of course he’s got an unexpected no-show in security, now’s absolutely the time for his super-vetted, dependable employees to start going AWOL on top of everything else he’s got to track down. “Just another day in the life of the Continental.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I still find this location much more relaxing than any of the branches on the East Coast,” Peter says. When Stiles looks up, he’s smiling, but down at the bag, because he’s taking out a big, crumbly, beautiful scone. Pumpkin, from the look of the seeds scattered across the top. “We’re still a little too new for their tastes, apparently.”

“You’re second-generation,” Stiles blurts out. Okay, so maybe he should stop by the vending machines and get himself something for his blood sugar, if he’s going to avoiding perving on guests by spilling guest file tidbits all over the place.

Granted, it’s just them and the hotel’s surveillance system (and Stiles personally recruited the woman manning the console this shift), and Peter, at least, seems more interested in the scone. “Third, actually, once everything’s declassified,” he says, a bit muffled, and then he wipes the crumbs off his mouth. “And we moved out there ten years ago, and as far as I can tell, it hasn’t moved the needle one bit. New York snobbery, honestly—if you don’t make your membership there, you might as well not exist. As if the majority of us did anything besides sigh and reroute all of our travel around the city when we heard about Wick. You know, I do wonder what the booking levels at the New York branch are like these days. Can’t have encouraged them.”

It does occur to Stiles that Peter might have picked up hints about the East-West Coast rivalry whenever he’d gotten recommendations for hotel staff hangouts, but…even if he did, he sounds bitter enough that Stiles thinks his contempt is genuine. And the rivalry does go beyond hotels. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Stiles finally says. “Just…let us know, whenever you’re out here, what we can do for you.”

Peter’s head comes up far too fast; he’d clearly been lying in wait for that. “Of course,” he says, smiling. “Though that’s going to be much more often, actually. We’re moving back—my sister’s finally realized there’s no point in throwing good people after bad.”

“Oh, so you’ll be able to stay local?” Stiles says. He’s a little irked. He can’t quite tell what Peter’s after, but he doesn’t like guests thinking they can outthink Management (because honest-to-God it’s just a slippery slope from second-guessing availability of view upgrades to second-guessing security measures). “So wouldn’t you be coming here less?”

That doesn’t throw Peter at all. On the contrary, he looks even more pleased with whatever he’s doing. “I suppose there’s no _need_ , but we’re rather familiar with this place now,” he says, easing past Stiles. “And it’s very nice to have someone else think of you once in a while, you know. Even if it’s not required, I think everyone improves when they know there’s a future benefit in it for them. No?” 

Stiles shrugs noncommittally again and checks his phone again, trying to give Peter as little reason to stop again as possible. The other man does take the hint, since this time, he keeps on moving till the sound of his scone-munching disappears into the elevator.

“Finally,” Stiles mutters, looking up—

He left something. It’s a waxed-paper baggie from the bakery, and when Stiles picks it out of the disarranged hallway bouquet, because clearly, he can’t just ignore a blatant disruption of the guest experience like that (and Peter fucking knows it), he finds homemade fruit-and-nut bars in his favorite flavors inside.

 _Creepy guest alert: Peter Hale_ , Stiles texts Lydia, with a photo of the bars attached. _Staff mole?_

 _Will look into it later,_ she texts back. _Do you have any names yet?_

Stiles winces and turns halfway back to the room. His stomach growls and he nearly drops the cold coffee he’d forgotten he was holding, and when it sloshes around inside the cup, it sends up just enough of an aroma that his caffeine-sensing receptors unshrivel and whine for it. He looks at the bars and coffee, then at the phone, then at the door. 

His phone buzzes again. _Names. I need them,_ Lydia’s text reads. _I called Braeden in but she needs to go out in an hour._

“What the _hell_ , universe?” Stiles sighs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, suspension of disbelief and all that but every single park in New York City is surrounded with high-density buildings, and those insane so-early-it's-night joggers. The only cover-up explanation I've got is Winston's hit squad must file for a lot of movie shoot permits.
> 
> ...I love the _Wick_ movies, I really do. It's just I've stayed in fancy hotels and why would you _not_ call the operator for room service? I mean, even the non-fancy ones will bring you a toothbrush if you forgot one.
> 
> I _can_ believe that anywhere you go in New York, you have a coin-accepting business on the same block. Rural California, not so much. 
> 
> Paying in cash? Still the best way to go off-grid, never mind fake identities. But paying in highly distinctive and memorable gold coins? I assume somewhere, there's a really souped-up change machine that spits out Amazon gift cards or something like that.
> 
> Event-hosting is an absolute necessity for revenue generation for a hotel as fancy as the Continentals are. Also I like to think Winston fusses over seating arrangements when he's not dealing with people like John.


	3. Stiles

Okay, Stiles ate the bars and the cold coffee. His blood sugar was crashing and the nearest vending machine is ten minutes away, while room service will take seven and Lydia needs names ASAP. The hotel is more important than anything else right now, so he takes that sugar boost and gets back in the room, telling himself Lydia’s on the Hales’ case anyway.

So, once he has all the information he needs out of the latest idiot to think the house rules are optional, he relocates the situation appropriately (see, even Management abides by the rules, isolated emergency enforcement incidents aside) and then arranges for…

“Seriously?” Stiles says, staring at his account manager in disbelief. “I mean, what—I don’t—literally, okay, I don’t understand what you mean when you say you can’t take this one. That’s what you _do_. It’s _all_ you do.”

“Listen, man, I know, I wouldn’t be turning you away if we didn’t have the backlog from hell right now,” the guy says, dragging his hand back through his hair in a harassed way. When his phone buzzes, he jumps with the fright of somebody truly knee-deep in the shit. “I’m fucking screaming here, okay? I had two units break down when we already had two scheduled to offline for maintenance, an unscheduled mass showed up two hours before you, and I honest-to-God just sent somebody to rent a refrigerated truck for the overflow. If I could, I would, but I _can’t_.”

Stiles stares at him. He stares back with the wild eyes of somebody who is just this shy of losing his professional grip and doing something supremely stupid, like throwing homicide victims into vacant lots for joggers to find, and this is somebody who has a stellar fifteen-year track record in his line of business. This is somebody who Stiles’ father once called in to deal with a whole garage’s worth of dead bodies and he pieced out that mass-casualty event over the available morgues like he was running an Easter egg hunt for Burke and Hare.

Damn it. “Well, all right, do you—” Stiles starts.

Just then, a man walks into the office. He’s a regular on the Continental circuit: comes to the West Coast at least once a year, books a corner suite so he can have an extra closet for his gun rack, and always bitches about the avocado toast (there’s nothing wrong with it except for the fact that it’s on the menu, because apparently, avocado toast is why the West Coast is so much softer than New England). He doesn’t say anything, just holds out one coin. Stiles’ account manager shakes his head. He frowns and the manager’s left eye starts to twitch, and Stiles starts to edge slowly out of the room. The man sighs and digs into his pocket, and comes up with a second coin.

“The prices around here are getting ridiculous,” he says. “This isn’t New York, you know.”

Stiles hops the rest of the way out of the room, heeling the door shut as he goes, and ignores all noises coming from behind him. When he gets back to the reception, he does mention it to the receptionist, who just nods and continues checking over the covert-ops grade taser in her hand. He…figures the on-site staff have it in hand, so he takes himself out into the parking lot to call Lydia and see what’s their best bet for a back-up vendor.

A car pulls up and Stiles, wanting his account manager to eventually get back up and running (preferably without a serious nervous breakdown or need for reconstructive surgery), tries to wave for the car to just go back out. Instead it slows to a crawl, then circles past three empty spaces to pull up right in front of Stiles and Derek Hale’s sitting in it. Of _course_.

“They’re full,” Stiles says, because no, he cannot just shoot the man and call it a day. “I mean, full. I mean, so full they probably don’t give a shit if your cold dead hands are sticking out of the minifridge they’re gonna shove you into if you go in there.”

Derek stares at him for a second, and then turns off the engine and puts his car into park. Then he rolls his window all the way down and pokes his head out. “They texted everybody two hours ago. Didn’t you get it?”

Stiles…did not check because he has a gazillion text messages because he spent half the day trying to defend the goddamn realm. “Well, if you got it, what are you doing here? Aside from stalking your hotel staff like you even need a hotel anymore? I mean, you know there are better ways to deal with change, right?”

He’s ranting. He’s had a shitty day and while Derek being here is highly suspicious, it’s still not an actual violation of the rules and Stiles doesn’t have any cause to do anything. Sure, it’s a private parking lot but it doesn’t belong to the hotel and Derek has as much right to be in it as Stiles does and Derek obviously isn’t leaving any time soon. 

Also, ranting at the guy isn’t going to do anything about the oversized meat cooler sitting next to Stiles. “I mean,” Stiles says, taking a breath and starting over. “If you have an urgent matter, just give me a couple minutes and I’m sure we can find you an appropriate alternative.”

This whole time, Derek’s just been eyeing him as if the man is…is casing Stiles, or something. Like Stiles is a particularly tricky facility to infiltrate and while Derek’s not being _creepy_ about it (not Peter-creepy anyway, though the mere fact that he’s not freaked out by Stiles’ rant is pretty incriminating), the moment that thought pops into Stiles’ head, _his_ mind runs it into completely unjustifiably inappropriate corners and God, he’s stressed and Derek is attractive even by assassin standards (somehow, in the Darwinian race for survival, sexy always seems to trump the advantage of being unmemorable) and he is in serious trouble if his no-guest mental filter is breaking down. 

“I’m good,” Derek says. He looks at Stiles another second, then reaches down to—oh, he’s popping open his car trunk. “There’s a guy over in Los Gatos we use when it’d take too long to drive back.”

Stiles processes this. This appears to be an offer. The offer appears to be genuine. This offer has not been vetted for problematic gotcha-moments and it is coming from a man who appears to always know where Stiles is, and Stiles kind of doesn’t care at this point. He needs to deal with his cooler before all of the dry ice melts. “You don’t know I have that kind of thing in here,” he says, nodding at the large cooler at his feet. “It could be sandwiches. We do cater externally sometimes.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Seriously?”

“Look, I don’t—I mean, Management—”

“I’m not staying at the hotel right now and Peter’s on my back to be in Oakland,” Derek says, irritated. “You’d be doing me a favor, okay? Or do I have to call reception and put in an order?”

“One, you just said you’re not booked for a stay so what would be the point of calling them even if you could figure out how to request something that requires me and a package going with you, and two, you—” Stiles almost says _guest_ and realizes he’s convoluting things beyond even his ability to follow them “—you need an excuse to be in another county and you’re picking _me_ for that?”

“It’s a really long story,” Derek says, and then he stares at Stiles some more. A couple seconds in, Stiles starts to understand that this is Derek’s idea of asking for a conversation change, right as Derek apparently realizes it’s not working. “Yeah, pretty much. If I tell him the Continental’s got me somewhere else, he can’t really argue with that, can he?”

Stiles sighs. “You know, we’re a full-service hotel for a specific niche industry, but we’re not a full-service everything. We don’t run your business and you don’t run ours. Off-premises alibis are specifically _not_ covered.”

“That’s not what the legal services menu says,” Derek says. Then smirks a little, all nice and framed by the lapels of his slick leather coat, when Stiles gapes at him. “We do order off that.”

“Yeah, well—well, that’s only for hotel- _adjacent_ actions,” Stiles finally spits back. “I don’t think it qualifies if you’re just in it for avoiding your uncle.”

For a second, Derek has that stiff scowl you get when you realize you really should’ve read page two, and now his cool-kid diss isn’t going to strut it anymore. Then he tilts his head and thinks about it, and Stiles can _see_ how he decides he doesn’t even care if Stiles is right, see it spreading all over his hot model-delinquent face. He’s still cooler (and a tiny part of Stiles, the part that’s frantically calculating dry-ice sublimation times, agrees with him). “Fine, whatever,” he shrugs. “So you don’t want to know where somebody’s not backed up till next week?”

He stares at Stiles, brow slightly raised, and Stiles has…Stiles has a sudden desire to pay Peter back for the bars and coffee by sending him their exact GPS coordinates. Except that’s against the rules: Management does not encourage guests to fight each other. Also, Stiles still has a dead body to get rid of.

“You’re not actually working for us right now. This is totally a volunteer effort. It’s off-off-books, because if you thought our membership application was bad, you should see the due diligence process for our vendors and _nobody_ skips that. Nobody,” Stiles says. The cooler is a silent but undeniable presence at his feet, and his phone is buzzing away in his pocket with unanswered texts and calls and emails, and Derek.

Derek’s face twitches a little when Stiles mentions working for the hotel, which Stiles chalks up to whatever backstory is causing Derek to avoid work right now. Other than that, he just looks the kind of bored that people get when they know exactly what’s going to happen at the end. “There’s a tarp in the trunk to keep that from scratching up the finish,” he says, with a minute jerk of his chin towards the cooler. “This is actually my car, not a rental, so if you could just watch it.”

“Also, this isn’t a favor,” Stiles grunts as he wheels the cooler towards the trunk end of the car. “Don’t start thinking you’re getting a Marker or something like that.”

“I’m not going to even charge you gas money, okay?” Derek says, craning his head to watch. He sags a little when Stiles pulls out the tarp, so it must really be his car. “It’s just a ride.”

“Sure,” Stiles says. “Right.”

* * *

It is not _just_ a ride, and when they need to top up the tank, Stiles totally fakes a full bladder so he can scoot into the gas station and prepay it before Derek can even stick his burner credit card into the pump. When he gets back out, Derek does that eyeing thing some more and then sort of makes small talk. You know. As you do when you’re an assassin hiding from your assassin uncle by blackmailing your way-better-at-that black-market hotelier.

“Peter’s a dick, but he actually wasn’t trying to be,” Derek says for absolutely no reason, nothing coming out of the radio except for inoffensive Top 40 turned down to a low hum, nothing on the road with them except for one lone truck rapidly disappearing in the rearview mirror. “He just really liked the railgun.”

“What?” Stiles says, because he was kind of busy trying to answer Lydia about why he isn’t back yet when they have a staff shortage that _he’s known about for just the past few weeks, okay_. He loves her, he does. She’s just pretty insufferable when they’re in the state of being royally fucked. 

Derek continues to slouch picturesquely behind the wheel, shadows doing some really nice things to his cheekbones. “You’re not going to order it or something now for us, are you?” he says, flicking his eyes over. “Because that’s okay, we’re not in the market for—”

“No, I’m not going to order it.” Stiles tries to remember what he was telling to Lydia to do instead of, God forbid, calling up the Continental Seattle to see whether they had off-duty staff they could lend, then gives up on that and turns off his phone. “I think you’re totally capable of doing that yourself, and you definitely have the bank account for it, with what Peter’s dropped in the past with the sommelier.”

A little _something_ creases Derek’s face, just before he pulls on that disgusted-disbelieving scowl of his, something that almost makes Stiles think the man’s nervous. “So you’re done with all of that Management bullshit now?”

“Hey— _no_.” Then Stiles wraps his hand around the door handle and takes a deep breath, cataloging known and suspected weapons caches in the car and on them and the approximate speed of the car versus the terrain and. Nope. Fuck it. He’s mad. “No, listen, you do not call it bullshit. You do not. No. Because whatever digging you and Peter have done, you really have no fucking idea what we do. You really don’t, because we are _that_ good that you don’t see how that _Management bullshit_ made safety and trust and protection a _convenience_ for you. Okay? Okay.”

Derek’s eyes widen. Not insanely, just enough to signal surprise and also turn him from dark and dangerous to potentially wounded-salvage-project. If either of them actually lived in that kind of world. He presses his lips together, bobs his head once to start to say something, and then doesn’t. 

The silence goes on long enough that Stiles holds up his phone and thinks about going back to arguing with Lydia, except…even if Derek’s an asshole, this is still probably the first time he’s had in weeks when he’s gotten to be mad about something besides what’s fucking up at the hotel. And then Derek goes and ducks his head and sighs. “Yeah, okay. That came out wrong.”

Stiles blinks at him.

“I actually meant—Peter meant—look, he said he told you we’re going to be on the West Coast again, I’d really like to not worry about having you after us,” Derek mutters, staring over the wheel. “Which is usually how it ends with him.”

“Well, were you going to break any of the house rules?” Stiles says.

“No,” Derek says, inflecting it like he’s not sure whether he just earned himself a bullet there.

“So you’ll be fine,” Stiles says. He fiddles absently with his phone. “And look, if that’s what you and Peter are up to…so I’m flattered, I mean, we’re all flattered, collectively, but you can’t really…you know, buy that. Goodwill. And I’m pretty sure that’s how it works all over, not just at our branch.”

Oddly, this strikes Derek as funny. He snorts and then pushes himself up against his seat, and then lets out a full-on laugh. “Yeah, true, that’s something even New York follows, no matter how much it annoys Mom and Peter.”

“What—” Stiles starts, because ugh, this is what fraternizing with the guests gets him. It’s not about going soft, it’s about going _sloppy_. Hotel staff have a professional duty to not gossip; guests don’t.

“Winston doesn’t hate us or anything, he just doesn’t love us and it doesn’t matter how much we spend on the sommelier,” Derek says, answering the question Stiles shouldn’t be asking. “Mom’s not used to that, and I think Peter is still pissed off that they bumped him from a penthouse to a corner suite to make room for Wick’s dog.”

Stiles just gets his fist up in time to choke into it. “He’s pissed off about _that_? Really? _Really_?”

“He’s not stupid enough to get himself killed like that, but that doesn’t stop him from bitching to literally everyone about it,” Derek says with a one-armed shrug. 

“Okay,” Stiles says, making a mental note to ask Erica to ask her friend of a friend over in Manhattan about that one. He’d heard about the dog—both of them—but not about the room bumping. Though that makes sense when he thinks about how the ventilation probably works and how much of a pain airborne allergies are to book around…

“It really shouldn’t be such a huge deal,” Derek says abruptly, and it’s clear he’s not talking about the Continental in New York any more. “It’s not like we’ve asked you for anything, have we? Actually, you keep getting mad we aren’t asking you for anything.”

“Right, not like returning to the same territory you were nearly torched out of ten years ago isn’t significant or anything,” Stiles says, because he works for the Continental and their file on the Hales is a hell of a lot better than anybody else’s, including the people who’d done their best to burn them all alive a decade ago. 

Derek gives him a quick, annoyed look, and then grunts and shifts so all his leather creaks. Stiles thinks that’s all he’s getting, and then Derek flicks up the turn-signal lever with a suddenness that makes Stiles pat for a knife.

“Not asking,” Derek says pointedly.

“Okay,” Stiles says.

They drive for another ten minutes, and then they’re at the place, which as promised, does not have a backlog, and although it is not listed as a vendor on the hotel’s books, it is for the Seattle branch (“tech commuters,” the intake person helpfully explains) and that’s good enough for Stiles to make a managerial call and use it and then forward the info to Lydia to get the place retroactively in their system.

“Um, this works,” Stiles says, because Derek is actually stepping out the door now that they’re sure it’s going to and thus saving Stiles the trouble of making him go before this gets more embarrassing than it already is.

Derek pauses, and for a second, under the leather and the sleek dark clothes and the neo-noir pin-up face, he almost looks like he feels just as awkward. “Good.”

“Yep,” Stiles says. Then, cursing himself: “Thanks. Hey…it’s not just a management thing, it’s just—I’m not really big on seeing my guests check out before they even check in, you know?”

“Yeah, I guessed,” Derek says after a second. He puts his hand out to stop the door from closing on him and looks at Stiles. “You seemed so _mad_ about it. I don’t think…forget the railgun, that was kind of a first, for me.”

“Oh, what? Well, did you see what they did to the lobby?” Stiles says, blinking.

Derek’s face goes all smooth and trained-assassin blank. Then he lets out a disgusted snort, shoulders out of the doorway, and leaves to go do whatever he’s been avoiding doing by driving Stiles around looking for new corpse-disposal facilities. 

That was—that was off. Well, the whole damned ride was off and Stiles knows that, but he doesn’t have time to figure it out right now. He. gives himself a good shake, counts out coins for the facility, and then calls for somebody to come pick him up.

“Did you find out what they were supposed to do in Oakland?” Lydia asks him once he’s gotten back to the hotel, after she’s given him six kinds of nervous tics over his use of an _unauthorized_ (but not undocumented, damn it, and that’s a distinction she really isn’t giving enough weight) vendor. “Did you even think to ask?”

“No, why? Did it come back here?” Stiles mutters, sucking down the espresso shot she’s just handed to him. The good and bad thing about Lydia is she always knows exactly what to do with him, whether it’s terrifying his spine into shriveling or coaxing it back into shape for the evening shift.

“No,” she says. She watches him for a few minutes. “Stiles.”

“I’m _researching_ ,” he says. “Because obviously, whatever they say, it’s still suspicious as hell, combined with the fact that Talia Hale’s been transferring their regulars out and Peter hasn’t taken a booking over half a million in the last six months, and he historically doesn’t discount so these have to be clearing debts or something and—”

Lydia drops a binder on a desk in a way that makes Stiles look up to check on the desk’s continued integrity. “Stiles, I’m taking you off tonight’s shift,” she announces. “With how long you were out with Derek, you’d basically be working a double and you know our rules about that.”

“About…about what, not pulling more than four in a month?” Stiles says. He frowns and turns back to his computer and checks the calendar. “But I haven’t…oh. Well. Still. That doesn’t have any bearing on my theory, Lyds. If the evidence is there, it’s there, no matter how sleep-deprived I am.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” she says, still glaring at him. If he’s officially off the shift, she can’t tell him what to do in his free time and she knows it, so he really has no idea why she’s wasting her time with that instead of something actually practical, like trying to slip him a sedative. “I agree, they’re looking for an exit plan. I don’t see why else Peter would come in and break glasses at the bar till he managed to total the gas bill you paid for Derek.”

“I—what? He what?” Stiles twists around. “What?”

It takes an awful lot to make Lydia look unnerved, but right then, that’s what’s in her face. “Down to the _cent_ , Stiles,” she says. “Do you know what that means? Do you?”

“That he has our resupply pricing?” Stiles says. “Which means he’s basically one suborned concierge away from having _all_ of our secrets?”

She nods silently. Stiles…opens and closes his mouth. Turns back to his computer, then looks at her again.

“Okay, yeah, I should totally not be on shift,” he says. “I gotta get ahead of this. Dad will blow his top if the High Table gets a new franchise application and he doesn’t know about it. You know what he’s like whenever they get involved. _‘And what the hell do a bunch of killers know about the hospitality business?’ _”__

__“Stiles, you are an idiot,” Lydia says. When he frowns at her, she covers her face with her hand and pinches the bridge of her nose. Then she pivots on her heels to stalk out of the office, disbelief and contempt soaking the air in her wake. “Fine, you do that. I’m going to actually get ready.”_ _

__“For what?” he calls after her._ _

__She doesn’t answer him, and after a couple minutes, he shrugs off the unease and goes back to his research. Whatever she thinks, he knows how to deal with guests. He knows how to handle their requests, and more importantly, how to anticipate them, how to be prepared to serve their needs before they even realize they’ve got them. He _manages_ this hotel, and nobody can tell him any differently._ _

__* * *_ _

__Stiles is careful about building his case. He gathers evidence, does the analysis, and only when he’s got all the pieces does he…well, fine, he can’t go after the Hales. He’s got an actual job, which involves looking after a very specific piece of real estate, so he can’t leave town whenever he wants and has to sit around, ~~obsessively~~ (shut up, Erica) painstakingly tracking the Hale family via industry grapevines until one of them books another room at his Continental. It only takes about two weeks._ _

__Peter checks in two hours early, when Boyd’s manning reception, so Stiles misses him then. He books a suite with a note that Derek may be joining him in the early hours of the morning, requesting in-room meal service for breakfast, extra snacks in the minibar, and a gun-cleaning appointment the next day. Then he drops off his bags and orders a car, and Stiles doesn’t get word of him coming back till late that night._ _

__The bar kitchen is still open and Peter’s just ordered three tapas off its menu when Stiles pops up onto the stool next to him. “Excellent timing,” Peter says, as if they had a set meeting time. “I was just about to try Ms. Martin about this disturbing dossier I came across on my last job.”_ _

__He hands over a black leather folder embossed with a silver triskelion on the front, then signals for the bartender to refill his drink as Stiles works to shut his gaping mouth. The bartender frowns over at them and makes a small gesture with one hand, asking Stiles if she needs to bring something extra when she comes over. That snaps Stiles out of it and he shakes his head, then looks at the bartender till she grimaces and just mixes a fresh gin and tonic; she knows better than to signal that openly in front of a guest, and she’s a five-year veteran, too._ _

__“If you need intelligence, Management doesn’t really get involved in that, though we’re more than happy to provide a selection of recommended contacts,” Stiles says, flipping open the binder. He’s not planning on reading the contents right now, he just wants to check that it’s not a Continental bill or something like that, but actually, that _is_ their logo at the very top of the first page. “Also, how do you know Lydia’s last name? How do you know Lydia, period? She’s not front of house.”_ _

__“Oh, this wasn’t a request, I just thought you might be interested,” Peter says. He’s messing with his tie—taking it off and rolling it up to fit in a pocket, which is just about on the right side of the bar’s dress code, even if the fit of his trousers is pushing it. “As for Ms. Martin, I wanted to make sure that Derek’s last visit didn’t ruffle any feathers. He has an unfortunate gift for doing that.”_ _

__Stiles isn’t really paying attention, since he’s quickly flipping through the handful of sheets inside the folder. Then he reads through them a second time, slowly enough to do the math. “No, he was fine, and that still doesn’t explain why you got through to her and you’re still alive.”_ _

__“Oh, I have my ways,” Peter says, smooth as butter melting all over hot, filthy hands. When Stiles looks up, he smiles in satisfaction, then goes still. Rethinks the smile and sits back with a mildly annoyed air that goes well with the super-tailored suit. “I called reception and asked to be put through, and shockingly, they did. I believe that that’s the recommended method for requesting a service here.”_ _

__“Right. Sure.” Suddenly Stiles missing Peter at check-in by fifteen minutes despite having a zillion alerts and monitors and flags on that makes a whole lot more sense. He knew the day was going too well for him. “So you called to, what, apologize for Derek giving me a ride when you already broke a bunch of glasses over it?”_ _

__“Also for my overreaction,” Peter says silkily. “I’m well aware of the rule about keeping our disputes off the premises, and your devotion to enforcing it.”_ _

__Stiles opens his mouth. Stops himself and shuts the folder, and then leans forward on it. “Yeah, sure, and obviously, every time one of you shows up, you’re just interested in making sure that _Management_ keeps everything kosher. Nothing more than that.” _ _

__If Derek always looks like somebody scraped him out of an action franchise’s make-up trailer, Peter usually looks like he’s on his way to snaking somebody in the back of a well-upholstered boardroom. Today’s no different, and as he leans forward too, Stiles can’t help but think their in-house tailor should swipe one of those suits and check out the stitching for how Peter’s suit seams just curl around that muscle at the shoulders. Which means Peter really is annoyed, since he seems totally oblivious to that. “You know,” Peter starts, voice steeped in sarcasm, and then he reins himself in. Takes a deep breath. “No, let’s start again. I have a new request for Management.”_ _

__“It’s not like I don’t appreciate you giving me a heads-up about the High Table dicking around with what they shouldn’t,” Stiles says, abruptly remembering where they are. He’d look around to see if any other guests are in the bar (the bartender had better gotten on ushering them out or staff shortage or not, she’s worked her last shift). “I do, okay? I mean, it’s definitely important—”_ _

__“I’d like to request that you at least treat us like guests, if you’re not even going to have the decency to give us a hearing,” Peter says._ _

__Stiles shuts his mouth. Peter’s hand slides back from his glass sitting on the bar till it’s almost about to tuck into his suit-jacket, and then he decides not to go for whatever he’s got under there, and instead pointedly flattens both hands where they’re fully visible._ _

__“I really don’t understand what the issue here is,” Peter goes on after a moment. “We’re all clear on the rules: no business on the premises, upon pain of crossing Management. Well, from where I’m sitting, we haven’t crossed you. We’ve just gotten on your bad side and for the life of me, I can’t think of why. All we’ve done is try to show our—”_ _

__Well, screw not making a scene in public. That’d be the preferred option but sometimes it’s not one of the available ones, and Stiles _is_ the one who makes that managerial call. “Appreciation?” he fills in. “Oh, yeah, I figured that out. I figured out you appreciate the Continental a hell of a lot. So much, in fact, that you’re including it in your transfer plans and now this stuff—” he flicks his fingers at the folder “—guess we’re done with the wooing and onto real business now?”_ _

__Peter makes an odd noise. Startled, more than just surprise flashing through his eyes, and then he looks Stiles over and his mouth twists in disappointment. “What on earth are you talking about, Stiles? Yes, we’re moving back, and we put together that folder because we’d very much like to continue having a Continental here.”_ _

__“Except under new management, right?” Stiles snaps at him, while he blinks with increasing rapidity. “Are you thinking you’re going to leverage a takeover with this? Because let me clear something up for you, that’s not how it works. I don’t care what the High Table thinks, they don’t tell the Continental, _any_ Continental, what to do and every time one of them forgets that, _we_ deactivate their member status. So you tell me, Peter: do you want to find out what it’s like to be as a nonmember?”_ _

__“Ah, no, of course not. That really wasn’t—I think we may have had a miscommunication somewhere,” Peter says in a rushed tone. He pushes himself up on his stool as if he’s going to grab Stiles’ arm and then thinks the better of it. “We weren’t giving you that because we want your hotel. I have no idea where you would’ve gotten that—”_ _

__“Oh, really? Are you kidding me?” Stiles shoots back, shoving himself off the stool. “I don’t know why else you’d follow me around or push me at new vendors or learn the business unless you were looking at a hostile takeover. I mean, what, I’m actually supposed to buy that you were _so_ impressed with my railgun that you just wanna make friends now?”_ _

__Peter breathes in sharply and then holds himself perfectly still. His eyes are on Stiles and they’re…surprisingly intense. His type, the smooth-talking ones who work their way into confidences and then deliver the final blow from behind, they usually take on that role because they know they’ll lose if they come from the front. But, says Peter’s icy stare, with him forget about choices because it was absolutely a _preference_._ _

__“Stiles,” he says calmly. “I will say this once: Derek and I _prefer_ the current management. In fact, if you’re looking for a motive, there it is.”_ _

__Two things happen right then: Peter steps back and looks past Stiles, his arm coming up in the universal check-please signal, and Erica runs into the bar, waving a piece of paper. “Sti—uh. I’m sorry for interrupting, but we have a staffing issue that we need you to look at,” she says, coming up to them. “It’s urgent, but I can stay and help with whatever you were discussing…”_ _

__“What staff—oh.” Stiles scans the memo listing the names of five employees who’ve all resigned on the same day, then slaps it onto the bar. Then picks it back up again, stuffs it into Peter’s folder before anybody can read it, and takes it and the folder off with him. “Sure, yes, please see that Mr. Hale has—gets whatever assistance he asks for. This is Erica, she’s an assistant manager and she should be able to see to whatever you need since I, um—sorry, I have to go but I’ll—”_ _

__“Yes, yes, I know the drill,” Peter says, suddenly sounding weary. “I suppose I’ll put in another request with _Management_.”_ _

__There is a little stab in his voice at the end, enough for Stiles to hesitate, but before he can do more, Erica interposes herself both verbally and physically, sliding between Stiles and the other man with her arms primly behind her back (which also happens to position them perfectly for drawing her taser). “Sir, I’d be happy to see to _any_ need you may have,” she says._ _

__Stiles claps her on the shoulder and then dips under the hinged section of the bar, using the staff door to exit instead of going through the lobby. He half-hears Peter curtly telling her that he’s perfectly fine and will not be needing anything, and then he’s into the kitchen where Lydia is standing there waiting for him, her warpath binder (do you think Lydia would have a mere disaster-recovery plan) in her arms. The blood-red cover is unmistakable._ _

__“Listen, Lydia—” he starts._ _

__She rolls her eyes. “Did you think you got into or out of that conversation with Hale just now without me?” she says, turning on her heel. “Just shut up and follow me, if you can’t handle that one, then you damned well had better handle this one.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Burke and Hare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders) were infamous serial killers who started out with body-snatching and then decided to ensure their supply line.
> 
> I think the dog got a penthouse in the second movie. You'd give that dog a penthouse. Even without the ventilation considerations and those are real.
> 
> The Continental is one of the best fictional hotels ever, but also, it's a hyper-specifically Gilded-Age/Euro-styled _Manhattan_ setting. I think the only setting I could've picked to (lovingly) mock it even more is Brooklyn, but even I couldn't do that to Wick and Winston. Imagine Charon whipping out the small-batch organic free-range meat-based doggie biscuits.


	4. Stiles

They’re losing staff for the same reason that they’ve had two rule-breaking incidents in the past month: _somebody_ is under the impression that the Continental SF is no longer going to be a Continental. A couple quick calls makes it clear the rumor isn’t coming from anyone who should know better, like another Continental’s GM or somebody actually sitting on the High Table, but for some reason, nobody else is doing their homework. Instead they’re all acting as if a member can just _change_ their mind about what they signed up to.

“I told you this was going to happen after what Wick did in New York,” Lydia says. She watches Stiles hang up and then hands him a coffee before he can say something about Winston he probably shouldn’t. “Your father told them this was going to happen. It just takes one exception.”

Fuck the coffee. “But he’s Baba Yaga and it’s Winston! Who honestly thinks like that besides them? They’re not doing business, they’re running around making scary stories for the rest of us to tell the new hires! We’re just trying to book a full house every week!” Stiles says, dropping the coffee on his desk and throwing up his hands. 

Lydia stares at him till he lets them fall to either side of the chair. Just for that, he also lets the swing of his arms tip him backwards till he’s slouched down enough to stare at the ceiling. Which she allows for all of two seconds before she clears her throat.

“Ugh. Fine, whatever, we’ll handle it,” Stiles mutters.

Lydia’s flipping pages. “I already called all of the other GMs and confirmed they’ve updated their blacklists. It sounded like Winston was going to take care of opening the accounts—”

Stiles flaps his hand. “Yeah, he at least feels bad about screwing the rest of us, so he’s covering half the amounts and we’ll allocate back to him for the rest. But you know it’s not going to kill the rumor if some random merc takes them out. Management’s got to make a clear statement.”

“I do, but I also realize that Management _here_ needs to cover the regular shifts for the rest of the week, and between reassuring current guests and overseeing the ongoing renovations and trying to hire for these vacancies, we’re going to have to suspend the double-shift rule,” Lydia says, with a pointed jab of her stiletto heel into his shin. “You’ll also need to drop this flirtation with the Hales.”

“What are you talking about, they’re the ones who keep showing—” 

Lydia has this one Look, where her lashes flutter a little in the wake of her crashing wave of disbelief and then she opens her eyes wide and kind of stares you into an epiphany. She gives Stiles that one right then, and suddenly the pieces start to fall into place: Derek and Peter aren’t trying to open up a separate hotel, and they can’t be trying to buy their way into this hotel either. Starting a hostile takeover by tipping Stiles off about the rumors is guaranteed to lead to a fight with current management, and while Stiles might be short-staffed, he still has more than enough to deal with anything the Hales could muster. Peter’s smart enough to figure out their margin, he’s smart enough to know that. So if the _hotel_ was what they really wanted, they would’ve just let the rumors keep on swirling and sat back to watch and then picked up the operating license out of the corpses once the value had dropped enough. Also, if they wanted the hotel, there is absolutely no reason for them to be trying to pay back nonexistent tabs. No business reason, anyway, and when you take away the business, the only other connection between all the incidents is…

“—up,” Stiles says. “Oh.”

“You are _exceedingly_ slow, considering we’re in crisis mode,” Lydia says. Her chair creaks and then her heels click across the room. Then they come back and she leans over Stiles. A key-ring drops onto his chest. “On second thought, don’t drop it. We both know you won’t anyway, not that you’re thinking about it. So just deal with it and get it out of the way already, because we have interviews for day-shift security and assistant parking valet and then we’re club-hopping tonight and I need you focused.”

“What,” Stiles says. He blinks. “Club…”

She slaps the key-ring, just hard enough to impress its outline against his breastbone, and when he reaches up to push her hand away, kicks the lever on his chair so that it suddenly catapults up and tosses him onto his feet.

“Wear something tactical, and by that, I _don’t_ mean whatever supposedly nonlethal spray Scott’s talked you into this time,” Lydia sniffs, walking out. “You doctored his test answers and he _still_ got a D-plus in Chemistry, Stiles. Take a hint, would you?”

“Yep,” Stiles says, catching the key-ring. “On it, don’t you worry.”

* * *

So Stiles dropped the ball. He is fucking Management at the fucking Continental SF, and he dropped the ball. You don’t have to tell him twice.

He pulls up the resumes on his interviewees on his phone, briefs himself on them while finishing up and sending a staff-wide memo to inform them of the new blacklist entries and the reasons why, and then takes a call from his father while double-checking the workflow at all vendors within a fifty-mile radius of the hotel who might be relevant to a club-hopping, tactical dress code night. And _then_ , as if the world has finally decided to acknowledge his hard work with some quid pro quo, a notification pops up that one Suite 3B, corresponding to the keys Lydia gave him, has just ordered room service. Stiles takes it up himself.

Nobody answers the door when he knocks, either the first or the second time. He checks the security logs again, then pulls out his master key and unlocks the door. Uses a long spatula and the muzzle of his gun to nudge it open and then makes sure to button up his bulletproof (staff uniforms are tactical, did you think they’d sell that and not use it themselves?) jacket across his belly before he slides inside the room.

The living room is empty, and so is the alcove office over to the left, but he can hear the shower going in the bathroom. This not being his first potentially problematic situation, Stiles doesn’t barge right in on the highly-trained assassins. He also doesn’t loudly announce his presence, because the hotel only has bullet-stopping filler in the walls between rooms (they’re not being cheap, it’s just easier to move a wall without that in there and they need to reconfigure a suite more often than they have people trying to shoot into other rooms—well, usually that’s how it is). Nope. Instead he leaves the food on the nearest table and then tiptoes around the suite on a twenty-point weapons check.

He goes as fast as he can, but he’s only on point fourteen when the shower suddenly turns off. It had sounded kind of odd even before that, but the volume of their waterfall heads allow for a _lot_ of plausible deniability, and now that’s gone and he can clearly hear the distinctive slap of human limbs together.

“Seriously, Peter?” Derek grunts breathlessly. “Like that was gonna bring Stiles around.”

“Well, if you—you think you can—do better—” Peter’s gasping, less and less words making it between each wheeze “—wouldn’t be—under me right now, would you?”

Derek’s answer to that is the kind of groan that either means you’re dying gutshot with the sure knowledge that some agency’s taking the scorched-earth approach to your reputation, or that you’re consensually testing how much force it takes to mutually roll your eyes right out of your head. Admittedly, Stiles spares more than a second to consider which of those is more likely, but with the way Derek and Peter had been bickering the first time he’d checked them in and hey, the no-killing rule does cover intra-family-business-disputes if they happen on the premises—

“Fuck fuck _fuck_ you fucking _fuck_ ,” Derek hisses. On the last ‘fuck,’ his voice snaps off like a bone meeting a hard edge at sufficient speed. 

Stiles gives up and snags the sawed-off shotgun he’d found behind the TV stand and takes the two strides to the bathroom. “Management!”

They…do not shoot him through the walls and doors. They do keep breathing heavily for a couple seconds, and then there’s a light tap about a foot from where they sound as if they are. Then one of them clears their throat.

“Stiles?” Peter says.

“Welfare check,” Stiles says.

Somebody not Peter makes a strangled noise, and Stiles knows it’s not Peter because Peter starts hissing like a pissed-off cat at Derek, who just keeps on making that horrendous gravelly stutter. “Seriously?” Derek says, and Stiles realizes he’s _laughing_.

Stiles rolls his eyes and notices his guns are sagging. He gets them back up. “What, exactly, is your problem with that?”

“Aside from a complete inability to prioritize?” Peter mutters, shuffling around. Then he does something to Derek, who grunts in pain and goes back to snortling. “He had to take off his coat. As usual. It’s not about the public indecency, Derek, we pay for the special lining so you can _not get stabbed_.”

“Oh, um…wait, you…” And while Stiles’ mouth just flops around there like a headless fish, his equally zombified limbs nudge open the door so that he can finally see what’s going on. “Oh. You’re stitching him up.”

Peter pauses in the middle of strapping a bandage around Derek’s shoulder. He’s on his knees, Derek’s lying on his back between those, they’re both half-naked, and behind them a neat, if sopping, row of clothing is hanging from a makeshift line tied between the showerhead and the towel bar at the opposite end. The clothing is mostly rinsed free of blood, though plenty of watery pink splashes are still all over the glass walls.

“What did you think…did you think we were killing each other?” Peter says, offense slowly growing in his voice.

“What? No! No, not—well, okay, for a second but just at the end but before that I completely thought you were fucking!” Stiles yelps.

Derek and Peter stare at him. Stiles grimaces.

“I mean,” he starts lamely, and then notices Peter’s eyes tracking the shotgun. He winces again and sets that aside on the sink counter. Then he holsters his gun. “It happens a lot. Walking into that. More than you think.”

“More than walking into people killing each other?” Peter finally says.

“Well, _that_ isn’t supposed to happen, period,” Stiles snaps, remembering how sore he is that that’s even an issue. Peter’s face twitches with regret and then Stiles feels guilty for taking things out on a man who actually does seem to be siding with him on that one, and. Right. Jesus, he’s _Management_. In the _Continental_. “Anyway, holy fuck, why are you not on three in our state-of-the-art round-the-clock surgical suite or asking dry-cleaning for an in-room pick-up? We can do this stuff for you!”

Peter moves his shoulders in a chagrined shrug. “It wasn’t that we don’t know the quality of your service, Stiles, but—”

“He thinks he really pissed you off and didn’t want to bug you, and I was kind of passed out so I couldn’t tell him he was being an idiot,” Derek says, twisting away from Peter. He gets himself half-up before Peter catches up, but when Peter does, he grabs the ends of the bandage on Derek’s arm so that obviously, the better option is staying still with a slightly bulgy-eyed expression and a clenched jaw. “Anyway. Since we’re actually talking about it now, Peter was just trying to help with your problem.”

“My nephew is oversimplifying, as he does,” Peter interrupts with a vicious twist at the bandage. He gives Derek’s hiss a pointed shoulder and then pushes himself up to his feet, absently fingering a damp reddish stain on his trousers. “We don’t have any doubt that the Continental will provide the same impeccable service that it always has.”

Derek starts to roll his eyes and then Peter looks at him, just looks at him, and Derek winces and grabs at the bandage. “Yeah. So no, we don’t want to kick you out, we’re fine with you staying in charge,” Derek says. Looking at Stiles’ shoes, but still. “If you couldn’t tell from the fact that we’re not the ones trying to kill people in h—fuck!”

Peter sighs heavily as he removes his foot from whatever soft spot of Derek’s it’d just prodded. “What he means is—”

“Okay, listen, I’m not—I don’t think you’re trying to take the hotel away,” Stiles says. 

“And before you say it, we weren’t saying you were weak or couldn’t do it either,” Derek says, shuffling himself across the floor and away from Peter. When Peter glares at him and lifts his foot again, Derek glares back and jerks his own foot up to block and ends up tipping himself onto his back like an overturned turtle, if turtles came in shirtless bloody muscle. “You know, sometimes you just see somebody, and you think they don’t deserve the shit they’re getting, and want to give them a hand?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get that at this point, and that’s…I was gonna say that’s really nice of you but you’re bleeding and can I just call medical already?” Stiles says, his eyes tracking that blood dripping on the tile, in a way he wished was about perving.

Derek breaks up his little glower contest with Peter and twists around to look at Stiles. “Are you going to use that as an excuse to blow us off again?”

Stiles pauses in the middle of pulling his phone. “Are you—are you actually trying to guilt me into letting you bleed out?”

“ _I_ will call medical,” Peter snaps before Derek can, stepping over the other man to go out into the bedroom. “And then perhaps we can all sit down and have a serious conversation instead of these ridiculous temper tantrums. Or maybe just Stiles and I should have that. I still have the sedatives, nephew.”

“I’m not bleeding that bad if I let you do the stitching,” Derek snipes back.

“Because the last time you tried to do it yourself, you almost crippled yourself by basting a ligament to a—”

It does occur to Stiles that maybe he should’ve taken them separately, considering what they’d been like when he’d first met them. Which they seem to be rapidly regressing to, and this is not what he came up here to do and Peter’s got the room phone off the hook but obviously is more interested in getting in the last line and okay. Stiles knows what to do with this. He’s just got to actually _manage_ , for once. “I just texted medical _and_ the cleaners, and we’ve got seven to ten minutes before we relocate you to a nice, fresh, bloodstain-free suite,” he announces. “So listen, I am sorry I wasn’t actually listening to you. I mean, that’s my job too, and I wasn’t doing it, and—I was a jerk. Sorry.”

Derek and Peter had stopped bickering as soon as Stiles had started talking. For a second a little impatient twitch had gone through both of them (really family resemblance there, even more so than the crazy good looks and attitude), as if they were wondering how long before they could start going at each other again. But then they’d obviously started to hear what Stiles was saying, and gradually, disbelief gets replaced by surprise and then by a kind of wary satisfaction.

“Well, under the circumstances, I don’t think we can blame you for wondering about ulterior motives,” Peter eventually says. He puts the phone back on its cradle and comes over, absently running a hand through his hair (it’s a lot curlier ungelled than you’d suspect). “But really, Stiles, we just…wanted to let you know how much we appreciated your efforts. It might be standard procedure, from your point of view, but from ours they went above and beyond, especially the—”

“Railgun?” Stiles says, testing something he’d been mulling over on the way up. Then he grins. “Really? That’s what gets you hot?”

Peter recovers pretty quickly from his unplanned hitch, and then just _leans_ into it. Both physically, taking up all the remaining space in what is an extremely generously-proportioned doorway (because actually, dismembering’s not really an ideal solution to get out of tight spots, given how fat gets everywhere and it just takes one rancid drop to stink out a room), and vocally, with how his “ _Stiles_ ” inappropriately probes all actual or potential cavities in the name. “Can you honestly blame me? And you didn’t even _know_ me yet.”

“Again, I keep that under the counter for everybody,” Stiles says, though okay, he’s not exactly backing off as Peter slinks up to him, bare, bloodstain-accented chest greatly endangering Stiles’ suit’s ability to look publicly presentable. “Anyway, so this was all about—ah. I. Wait. There’s just.”

Peter breathes on him. Slow and damp and hot, hips straining against the hands Stiles has just clamped around them, so close that Stiles can feel his tie trying to lift off and stick to Peter’s skin out of sheer electricity (and yeah, sure, he knows that’s not really how electromagnetic forces work except right now it is _exactly_ how, witness the way his feet keep inching forward). Peter’s hands are hovering close enough that Stiles feels sympathetic sweaty prints on his thighs. Some days Stiles hates his job. Hates it with the passion of a thousand burning unlaunched ships.

“Hmm?” Peter says, all lazy, heavy-lidded smile.

Stiles grimaces. “I need to remind you about Rule Eight: Management and guests do not have personal relations. And let’s be clear, the rule doesn’t say ‘sexual,’ it says personal, and this is post the post-modern era so we totally understand they aren’t just separate things, they’re just two points on a three-dimensional projection of the human experience.”

This time, when they stare at him, it’s nothing but genuine lack of comprehension. No misunderstanding, accidental or deliberate, no ulterior motives coloring their reaction. They just honestly have no reference point for what he’s saying.

It kind of hurts, for real, as in his finger joints ache when he does it, but Stiles peels his hands off Peter and steps back. “I can’t date guests, and at this point if you know my fruit-bar preferences there is no way in hell it’s going to be just sex,” he sighs. 

“But—New York—they completely—” Derek, actually, sputters.

Peter just continues to stare at Stiles as Stiles goes on. “I know, I know, but I’m not Winston and if nothing else, okay, I think you two realize we don’t _just_ do whatever New York does,” Stiles says. “If it makes you feel better, nobody remembers that one. They always get stuck on Rule Five because Markers are so old-school blood-and-guts chivalry, basically, and then nobody wants to read all that footnoting about the accounting even though it’s kind of, I don’t know, critical to determining who’s got the right to hold your life at gunpoint? But trust me, it’s in there.”

“I believe you,” Peter says after a moment. Still not any extra dressing on it, just stating things. Then he shifts back and even though it’s a minute movement, he’s obviously having one of those cognitive recalibration experiences because about a thousand expressions go over his face in between poses. Most of them seem to be disappointed, with a side of sudden wariness. “How…surprising. But—well, I suppose we can’t do anything about that, can we. Except beg for forgiveness for overstepping.”

The last thing Peter sounds like is like he’s in the mood to forgive, but he also doesn’t sound like whatever massacre he’s currently plotting involves Stiles or Stiles’ nearest and dearest. As for Derek, he doesn’t even try to think it through. “This is bullshit,” Derek says. “So in New York they can literally kill people and they still get to walk out the front door. All we did is—”

“Look, you think the rest of us don’t break out the emergency shots whenever we hear what’s gone down in Manhattan?” Stiles snorts. He’s almost got his phone back in his pocket when it buzzes, and his extra sense tells him it’s Lydia. He ignores it anyway. “God, Winston is a pain in our collective ass. A legend, but also? A pain. Also, I’m not telling you this because I’m going to order up two bullets in the head just because you got flirty.”

The two of them relax enough for Stiles to realize they’d actually been taking that possibility seriously, and then he feels…weird. He’d say the feeling is guilt, except neither of them are Scott or his father. Maybe it’s his internalized Lydia scolding him for dragging out the punchline till the joke is no longer a joke, but a crisis in need of firm management.

“Well, look, I should mention Management has some job vacancies in security, and word on the street is you’re looking for an exit strategy,” he says. He waits a few seconds, but while Peter and Derek both are listening to him, they’re not nearly as interested as he was expecting.

“Yeah, oh, thanks,” Derek grunts, pushing himself to half-sitting and looking around for something. “We’ll talk to Mom, might be an option.”

Peter starts to reply to that, then pauses to frown instead. “That wouldn’t be unnecessarily awkward for you?” he says to Stiles. “Or is this more of Management’s services for everything we could need?”

“Okay, first, that’s not what we promise, and second, if you work for the hotel, you’re not a guest,” Stiles says, a little irritated at how slow they’re being. “And security reports into _Lydia_ , not me. I mean, you have to know that, you know what her actual last _name_ is and you’re not terminally catatonic and—”

The light comes on for Peter. “So—your HR policy on inter-employee relationships is different than the one on employee-guest relations?”

“Bingo!” Stiles says in exasperation. “Honestly, you can stalk me across the state but you can’t—”

Peter kisses him. They get—they get kind of smushed into each other. His suit—his suit is going to need dry-cleaning after this, and Peter has a garotte hidden in his trouser inseam and wow, okay, Stiles’ hands covered a lot of ground for one kiss, no matter how much tongue and lips were involved. Anyway, Stiles should—he makes himself leave the garotte wire alone and get his hands back out of Peter’s pants, and then he grabs Peter’s hands before they can track down his second gun. Peter makes an annoyed noise in his mouth and he bites the man’s lip by accident and then Peter shudders and groans and Stiles kind of thinks he should forget about dry-cleaning the suit and just shred it for the compost heap.

Instead, Stiles pries them apart. “Um, you still have to _apply_ for them,” he says. “The jobs?”

“I think we already did?” Derek says.

He sounds kind of odd, but it’s not till Stiles twists around that he realizes it’s down to Derek’s voice gravelling like somebody grated sex all over it, and that’s kind of the look Derek’s giving him too. Sitting there, staring up at Stiles and Peter, knees sprawling as he absently nudges the tight-looking crotch of his pants with the heel of his hand.

Wait, he said something important. “What?” Stiles says.

Derek’s scowl is about as dreamy and detached as a scowl can get. “Got it,” he says, holding up his phone with his other hand. “She showed up and insulted us and then sent us this thing—”

“ _What_ ,” Stiles says, before dropping down and swarming across Derek for that phone so that he can see…it’s there. It’s on Derek’s phone. It has her verification code at the very bottom so it’s real, a complete and actual letter of employment for a position as—“‘Internal management’? What the hell is that? That’s not an actual position here! What does that even do? We’re already Management!”

“I think she said something about a need to improve talent morale,” Peter says into Stiles’ ear. “Something about avoiding any trace of burnout?”

Stiles twitches, because Peter’s breath tickles, and then he turns his head and Peter has to jerk back to not get knocked in the nose. Because Stiles apparently dragged him along, and now they’re both huddled over Derek, who is. Is half-naked and tacky with blood and probably too ashy for that to be healthy and also, giving Peter an annoyed look. “I think that part actually was her insulting your idea about changing the coffee machines,” Derek mutters.

Peter’s brows go up. “Says the man who can’t tell he’s about to drink kerosene from the _smell_.”

Derek’s eyes narrow and he pushes himself off the wall towards Peter, apparently forgetting that Stiles is between them and Stiles is torn between throwing up his hands to smack both of them, on purpose, and mulling over the surround-feel half-nakedness and.

“Welfare check,” Boyd says from the doorway.

Stiles yelps and throws his hands up anyway, but he doesn’t hit either Derek or Peter, and instead somehow manages to topple backwards and more or less off Derek in surprise. He rolls as quick as he can and comes up on his hands and knees, looking up to see Boyd still looking down at him. Standing next to a cart of medical supplies.

“This wasn’t a rules breach,” Stiles blurts out. He glances around, seeing the bathroom with fresh eyes, and then looks back and Derek and Peter are glowering at Boyd and Peter’s still mostly on Derek, with one hand right on Derek’s waist. “I mean the sex one. The guest sex one. I mean, it’s not the killing one either. No breaches.”

Boyd looks at him.

“I just walked in on them like this!” Stiles says. “I don’t know!”

“Well, what, _we’re_ allowed to screw each other, right?” Derek says. “I thought the rules don’t care about what guests do besides not killing each other.”

Stiles whips around. “Wait, so—I wasn’t—I wasn’t _completely_ wrong about that?”

Peter shrugs. “We’re a very close family,” he offers up blandly.

“Oh. Okay. Um, well…you’re right, the rules have nothing to say about that,” Stiles says, and then he notices the slight tension running through the other two men. “And um, uncle-nephew is…not a big deal for me either, come to think of it, and…and…damn it, Boyd.”

Boyd looks at him.

“Oh, come on, _Boyd_ ,” Stiles says. Okay, whines.

“This is my face,” Boyd says, still judging, and then he gestures to the cart. “So was somebody bleeding out or not? Scott’s mom wants to know or else she’s gonna come up next.”

Sometimes this job is so embarrassing Stiles can’t even hate it for the shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think Winston is the Grand Old Man of the Continental hotel line, and that's why he can get away with the favoritism, and it drives everybody else completely nuts but nobody's going to tell him to _stop_. Anyway. It's one thing to do the whole professional courtesy thing with a repeat customer or business partner, another to develop a personal connection with them, and I actually like the _Wick_ movies better when they're doing the first one. I get that vibe with John and Charon, or with John and that doorman he warns off in the first movie. It's kind of boring for Winston to cut him slack all the time. And also the Continental management must normally be viewed as a neutral party in order for them to be able to stay out of all the turf wars.
> 
> Basic field surgery kit is probably complimentary in every room, in case you don't feel like calling room service.
> 
> You didn't actually think I'd have Stiles outrank Lydia, did you?


	5. Stiles

Okay, obviously, Derek needs actual medical attention. Peter did a very competent field triage job but for full rehabilitation, you need real surgical expertise and things like blood transfusions and antibiotics. And if Stiles wants these two to work at the hotel, they’ve got to stay alive long enough that they can sign their letters of employment and get through onboarding and stop being guests. So they get Derek down to the third floor to get looked at, with Boyd silently and deliberately and maliciously (Stiles is head of ops, he monitors the training on those non-expressions for all staff) positioning himself between Stiles and Peter at all times, as if they were honestly going to start humping each other in the elevator. He knows that Stiles knows that they just had all the elevators rechromed.

Anyway, Boyd loses all deniability the moment he points out, within earshot of Scott’s mom, that Peter’s file says he has the same blood type as Derek. They actually have a whole fridge to pull from, but Melissa sizes them all up and “suggests” Peter make a donation and so Stiles gets booted out to the waiting room.

“You can’t have sex with them,” Boyd says, coming out too.

“I wasn’t!” Stiles says. “They’re not hired yet!”

Boyd looks at him.

“We got them down to medical, didn’t we? I’m concerned, too, and God, would you just stop that already?” Stiles says.

“Sure,” Boyd says, and then he steps aside to make way for Stiles’ father.

“Son,” Stiles’ father says. He’s got his suit-jacket on and it’s sitting a little awry, as if he just threw it over his shoulders on his way somewhere, and he looks tired. “Did we actually just import the entire Hale family?”

Stiles opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then shakes his head and heels the door behind him shut, and flops back against it. “Dad, listen, I had _nothing_ to do with that. Nothing. I swear I am telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, with no disclaimers, asterisks, or late addendums. This whole thing just happened to me too.”

“I—okay, let me start over again.” His father grimaces and rubs at one eye, then runs the same hand back through his hair. “Shit, I’ve been out. I really should have—sorry, I know I wasn’t around much this month.”

“Well, we had those big events and then you had the ongoing stuff with the High Table and _then_ this latest nonsense came up,” Stiles says, reaching for his phone. “I mean, look, don’t worry about it, I’ll go talk to Lydia right n—”

“Hold on a second, I wasn’t saying I was mad at you,” Stiles’ father says, reaching for Stiles’ phone. When Stiles twists away from him, he rolls his eyes and side-steps to counter, and then stops batting at Stiles and just stares in weary patience till the guilt-trip bumps up Stiles’ chin to look at him. “Stiles, listen, I just want to know if it bothers you.”

“That…Lydia has delusions of running my life?” Stiles says after a moment.

His father is not impressed. Amused, under that squint, but not impressed. “She actually had me looped in from the beginning, Stiles. And I just got out of a long talk with Talia, we hammered out the last points and I’ve got a tentative noninterference commitment from the High Table. Oh, and Winston thinks it’s hilarious. So I don’t think it’s just about your life.”

“Oh.” Well, it wouldn’t be, if Lydia had laid that kind of groundwork…and for a moment Stiles feels a little bit small and uninvolved. Okay, look, a lot of uninvolved. He’s head of ops and he just…didn’t even see any of that coming.

“Yeah, see, this is what I came down for,” his father says, sighing, and just as Stiles realizes he’d dropped his eyes, the other man puts a hand on Stiles’ shoulder to make him look up again. “She didn’t say anything about keeping it from you so I figured you two were doing the usual—”

It stings, sure, but Stiles can’t pretend he doesn’t know why it stings. “She gave me a couple chances to pick it up, I just was running around micromanaging the little kitchen fires again and missed the giant iceberg dead ahead—”

“—and then when she did explain that, she said you really needed them so the last thing she was going to do was bring you in so you could pretend you didn’t and ruin everything,” his father finishes. He tilts his head. “That make any sense to you?”

“Yeah, that does, that sounds like her,” Stiles says after a second’s thought. Then he blinks as his father snorts. “Well, it does. She probably thought I’d file it under personal time and those requests are the first to get rescheduled if a priority flag goes up, and…what?”

“See, this is why you two…you two just are,” his dad mutters. The man rumples one hand over his face again, then leans forward. “Stiles, you know you can have personal time and interests, right? This hotel isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything, and if any asshole is making you think different—that’s even more bullshit than us not being a Continental anymore. Hell, I’ll take that one myself. All right?”

Stiles catches himself flushing and scrubs at his cheek, and then catches himself at _that_ , too, so his arm gets squished up against his chest when his father decides to give Stiles a one-armed hug. Rolling his eyes the whole time, because they both know it’s not necessary, but yeah. Okay. Some days are rough, and some days are just complete surreal clusterfucks and…yeah, Stiles hugs him back.

“Anyway, so just tell me she wasn’t pretending she knew what you wanted because of some idea that it’d make you more like what she wants, and not actually about what you want,” his father says.

And his dad keeps making noises like the man doesn’t understand exactly what Stiles means. Hah. Not with syntax like that, he doesn’t. “Um, no, I’m…she’s…she kind of was right and I was, um, dense—but for the record, nothing’s even happened yet, I just—it was a welfare check, for real,” Stiles says. “They already had their shirts off when I walked in, Dad, and whatever Boyd reported is a complete and utter lie.”

“Kid, I don’t need to know,” his father says, letting him go. For a second Stiles thinks he might get out of it just because his dad doesn’t want to go there (corpse disposal builds up a completely different tolerance than birds and bees talks), and then the man screws up his face for one last thing, staring over Stiles’ shoulder at some cabinets of medical supplies. “Just—take care of yourself, all right?”

That…wasn’t where Stiles thought his father was going to go, given those cabinets are stocked with prophylactic materials. But hey, he’ll take it. “Yeah, I’ll—”

“The hotel’s gonna survive,” his dad says firmly. Then gives Stiles a last pat on the shoulder before turning towards the door. His phone’s chiming with the tone that means an incoming High Table call, so he doesn’t need to explain why to Stiles. Though he does, apparently, need to pause halfway to taking it and jab his finger at Stiles. “Also, I already saw their dossiers, so son, _stop_. It’s handled.”

“Okay, okay,” Stiles says, putting up both hands. “Stepping back. Stepped back. I can tell when something’s been kicked over my head.”

His father opens his mouth, and then the phone chimes again. So he has to take it, but not without a last, silent finger-shake at Stiles, who does his best to look as obedient and cooperative as possible till the other man leaves the room.

“Put your hands down, Stiles,” Melissa says from behind him. When he yelps and jumps, she nudges him in passing to keep him on his feet and then keeps on walking, stripping her gloves off her hands. “All right, you can go visit, but no busted stitches or experimental drugs. We just got an in-room service request up on eight.”

“I’m _Management_ , I’m the one who cleans up after things break,” Stiles says.

She starts to turn and look at him, but he manages to backstep and slip through the other door before she can do more than make exasperated noises. And probably message Scott to come up and interrupt, so Stiles grabs the nearest piece of furniture he sees—a chair—to wedge under the doorknob before he turns around.

Derek’s halfway to swinging his legs off the cot. “What are you doing!” Stiles hisses. “Do you want me to just save time and kill you?”

“Well, who’s trying out there?” Derek says, jerking his chin at the door.

“What—nobody! Nobody! We’re fine! I just—” it suddenly occurs to Stiles that confessing he blocked the door to keep Scott out will sound suspicious “—um, I…well, you can go, if you want. I just…wanted to make sure nothing got worse.”

Derek looks at Stiles, slowly lowers his legs back to the cot, and then looks at Stiles some more. “Why would it?” he says. “Peter’s the only one who did anything.”

Stiles opens his mouth to remind the man about falling all over him and then one, realizes Peter’s not around.

“She made him put on a shirt, and then he complained about how cheap it was, so she made him go wait for them to bring down our luggage,” Derek explains. 

“She didn’t make you put on a shirt,” Stiles observes. Because two, yeah, Derek is still shirtless, and now that he’s been reassured that no assassinating is needed, he is flopping back and from the way he shifts around on the cot when Stiles looks him over, he’s definitely showing off.

“What?” Derek says, brows rising.

Stiles resists the urge to roll his eyes. Instead he walks up to the edge of the bed and leans over Derek, and then, once the other man’s gotten that anticipatory look in his eyes, he holds up his phone in between their heads. “Can I get you anything, Mr. Hale?” he says, in his best room-service voice. “Any way we can be of service?”

Derek jerks back into the pillows. His brows say he’s pissed off and Stiles drops his other hand towards the emergency syringe tucked under each cot, and then they drop even more. He presses his lips together, then cocks his head. “I thought you figured out you liked us.”

“And I thought you actually got stabbed in the arm so you shouldn’t be in any shape to be trying to guilt-trip me into evening it up between you and your uncle,” Stiles says. 

For a second, Derek is annoyed. Then he decides to not be annoyed and relaxes and does he really need all of his muscles to twitch like that? Really? It’s not like Stiles can’t see they’re there.

“Well, I guess if you aren’t up to it,” Derek says, shrugging. “I’m okay, actually.”

Stiles opens his mouth, then closes it and leans in. He pokes the new, much wider bandage on Derek’s arm while watching Derek for the flinch. “Stabbed. In the ar—”

This thing Derek and Peter have about just kissing him when he’s trying to explain important things to them. It—works. Annoyingly. 

Stiles loses his balance and plants his hand into the pillow besides Derek’s head, which Derek takes as grab Stiles and haul him onto the bed, which _Melissa is going to kill him_ so yes, even though Derek’s tongue is making a very good argument with the roof of Stiles’ mouth that Stiles should backburner the annoyance…Stiles pulls himself out of it. Then cranes over, despite Derek getting all handsy up the back of his shirt, and tries to check Derek’s arm for any blood coming through the bandage and Derek is licking the side of his neck.

“I’m trying to make sure you’re okay,” Stiles hisses.

Derek grunts into Stiles’ shoulder, which feels a lot sexier than it sounds, what with how the man’s rubbing his face into the skin like he wants to imprint on Stiles or something. His hands slip to Stiles’ ass and Stiles hitches and Derek snorts. So Stiles shoves his hand down the front of Derek’s pants.

There’s an actual plan, okay? Because Derek isn’t the first difficult guest that Stiles has had to deal with, or even restrain, and up till guests consciously break rules, the hotel staff does its damnedest to ease everybody down with minimal injuries. So Stiles is just going to quickly _incapacitate_ the guy, so they can have a chat about proper surgical aftercare, except Derek kind of kisses him again. Okay, fine, Derek seriously, deeply, with a lot of chest-to-chest contact, kisses him again.

“Fuck it, stop worrying,” Derek mumbles as he rolls his cock up into Stiles’ hand. It’s a warm, heavy handful, thick and thickening against Stiles’ fingers in a way that immediately hazes his brain. “Know what I can do, okay? ‘m fine.”

“How do you—what, did you test that with Peter or something?” Stiles gasps in between sucks at Derek’s tongue. He’s lost his balance again, and the way that Derek is squirming under him isn’t really conducive to regaining it, or getting off the bed, or really, doing anything except spreading his legs and letting them drape to either side of the disgustingly _tight_ thigh Derek’s pressing into his groin, which feels—ugh, damn it, it feels good. Really good. Like, he has a sudden need to bite something just as luscious good, and luckily, Derek’s lower lip is right there.

Even more luckily, Derek seems to be into that. He groans and sprawls out some more as Stiles works his cock and God, fine, Stiles isn’t even trying not to stop now. “What? Gets boring.”

Stiles…is not quite that oblivious, even if the way Derek’s hand is grinding his ass is kind of short-circuiting his higher-level mental functions. “Are you kid—”

“Can you just shut up and let me—for _once_ , just let me—let me do this for—” Derek mumbles, nuzzling up the side of Stiles’ face. And leaving stubble burn but it doesn’t get past the beginning sting that’s actually kind of _hot_ before he laps that away, and also, somehow squeezes his thigh and Stiles together in just the right way to make Stiles come.

Fully-dressed. Like he’s a teenager embarrassing himself again, except for the fact that lying in bed with a half-dressed guy who looks like Derek does when Derek is throwing his head back, eyes squeezed shut, dick rounded against Stiles’ palm, is absolutely not something to be ashamed of. Jesus. Sometimes things actually do go right.

Derek hisses a little, jerks back and forth, and then slowly sags into this ridiculously pretty bundle of satisfaction, from the sex hair to the swollen lip distorting his default scowl to the long lashes covering eyes that are not exactly focused on Stiles. “Okay,” he says, semi-slurred but still clearly pointed.

“Yeah,” Stiles acknowledges, since Derek doesn’t look like he’s going to pass out in a medically problematic way. Then his hand shifts in Derek’s pants and he looks down and frowns. “Wait. There’s…is this lube down here already? What—”

“It’s some cream stuff she put on,” Derek says, still looking bleary. “Disinfecting stuff, maybe?”

Stiles pauses. Then yanks his hand out of Derek’s pants. “Wait, we just—and you had something _there_ too?”

All Derek will do is shrug, so Stiles apparently still has to check everything himself, so he opens up Derek’s fly and drags his pants down far enough to find…well, no stitches, at least, it’s just a scrape. One with a ton of skin-glue on it, which is now broken and which needs to be redone, but. He looks up.

“ _You’re_ going to help improve staff morale,” Stiles says.

“Well, Lydia said we can divide up duties between us,” comes Peter’s voice from behind Stiles. Peter, once Stiles is done flailing and then remembering Derek’s in bed and being unrealistic about things like Stiles accidentally hurting him and then done flailing some more, is lounging against the side of the bed and pretending to tap at a tablet. Really, he’s thoroughly enjoying what he’s seeing. “Caretaking admittedly isn’t Derek’s strong suit, but after over twenty years of him, I’ve plenty of experience in that area, at least.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “He said improving morale, not making everybody want to kill you.”

Peter glances over the top of the tablet, then lets out an irritated noise as he kicks off his shoes and then starts to get on the bed, waving the tablet in Derek’s direction. “Very well, would _you_ like to finish this questionnaire about past initiatives you’ve started to improve employee reten—oh, Stiles.”

Stiles opens his mouth, then winces as he hears the tablet clatter onto the floor. Then he looks back at Peter, who…well, of course he looks pleased that Stiles didn’t let him at Derek, and instead grabbed and rolled him and is now straddling his waist. “I’m starting to think the bickering was all part of the plan, too,” Stiles says.

“No, he actually really annoys me,” Derek says. While twisting over so that he can lie down next to them.

“Likewise,” Peter drawls, though after a quick eye-flick to the side, he keeps his attention on Stiles. He’s still smiling, but the smugness is toned down, and the body between Stiles’ knees is tenser than it needs to be. “It wasn’t exactly a plan, Stiles. If we’re going to be honest, and we would…we’d like this to start on a good footing. A good foundation.”

“Because you want to be sure you can build on it?” Stiles says after a moment.

Both Derek and Peter look a little wary, with Derek checking Peter for cues before sitting back. “Yes,” Peter says. He hesitates, the smile completely leaving his face. “We really just wanted to ask if that would even be possible. But that just seemed so—”

“You kept blowing us off,” Derek says.

“Yeah. I…yeah, I did,” Stiles says. He makes a face at himself and leans back. Then stops as he notices Peter and Derek are taking that the wrong way, their expressions closing up. “Yeah, I’m—I—it’s been kind of—I can do that. When it’s really busy. Making sure everything runs right just…takes up a lot of my attention.”

His arm’s up. He’d been going to scratch his head or something, he figures, but he puts that arm down with the other one, and then, looking Peter in the eye, puts his hands on Peter’s chest. Peter starts to smirk again. “Well, as we’ve been trying to say from the beginning: how can we help you, Stiles?” he purrs, leaning up as Stiles fists his hands in his shirt. “Because I do think we can be of great service here.”

“See, _this_ is why we end up fucking whenever one of us gets hurt,” Derek snorts.

He’s so busy shooting Stiles a look that he misses Peter getting up that arm till it’s wrapped around the back of his head and locking him into a. Okay. So Stiles can also see how they got so good at the kiss-‘em-into-shutting-up trick, and that they. They’re really. Really _hot_ that way. With Peter’s fingers twisting into Derek’s hair and Derek’s cheek hollowing out as he presses forward into Peter’s mouth and the way the ends of their eyelashes are flicking each other, they’re so close and—

“Stiles, I am _not shooting all of these people myself_ ,” Lydia says through the door.

Derek and Peter jar apart, and then, for the first time since Stiles came into the room, Derek grimaces and grabs for his bad arm. Stiles catches himself with his gun half-drawn, then re-holsters it and twists around. “Okay, okay, I’m com—wait, I thought we had interviews!”

“We did. They’re done. I made hiring decisions.” Lydia does not sound happy with him. Of course, Lydia also spearheaded an effort to get Stiles a pair of ludicrously attractive and highly-experienced potential boyfriends, but that’s her for you: it’s always about the last time you disappointed her. “The car will be out front in fifteen minutes, and you _will_ be in it.”

“Right behind you, fully-stocked!” Stiles calls at the door. He gets off the bed and one step away from it, then stops.

“Derek, you are staying,” Peter says. Peter’s sitting on the edge of the bed and already has tidied himself up to look presentable enough to pass the lounge dress codes, if not the restaurant’s. “That woman is terrifying and I refuse to have to defend you against an HR action on your first day. Finish the benefits paperwork.”

“You just don’t want to do that,” Derek snaps, though he’s not getting off the bed. “Besides, I can’t even tell where her holster is.”

Peter pauses in the middle of looping his tie around his neck. Then he looks over his shoulder. “I meant _Melissa_. Though if you’re going to start things off by insulting our _actual_ supervisor—”

“Okay, okay, look, neither of you are going anyway,” Stiles says. And that’s true. They have a ton of onboarding and even if Lydia fast-tracked the hiring process, she knows just as well as Stiles how important that stuff is. But…man, Peter and Derek just look so disappointed whenever he does that. Shoots them down. And honestly, he does want this (and clearly, everybody from his father down thinks he needs it, and there are a lot of issues in that for unpacking later but _okay_ , already, they have a point). “But…but if you want to get a head start on working here, get all the paperwork done so you can get right onto the job-shadowing part. Lydia’s going to be annoyed anyway when we’re done, and the less she’s got to come back to, the more that helps me. Okay?”

That…does not make them stop looking disappointed, particularly Peter. But it’s a completely different kind of disappointment, and it leaves their faces a lot quicker than the other kind. “Well, I suppose there’s some sense in that,” Peter says after a moment. He rolls back his shoulders, then glances around. Then bends over and retrieves the tablet. “We’ll be sure to be waiting for you when you’re back.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I…yeah, that sounds good. That—yeah. Good.”

Peter looks up at him, then smiles. “Good hunting, Stiles.”

“If you do need a ride, or something…” Derek shrugs. “Well, call.”

“Will do,” Stiles says. He hesitates another second, then turns and walks out. And maybe he’s grinning too.

“You’re not going out like that,” Lydia says, because she did not leave, as expected. She is still there, with a spare suit on a hanger for him and a pointed stare at a box of sanitary wipes. “For God’s sake, we’re going out for the _purpose_ of maintaining our standards.”

“Okay, okay!” Stiles yelps, grabbing at the suit. “I’m changing!”

This job sucks. But also, it is the _best job ever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The doctor who stitches Wick up in the first movie is the best, telling him about what proper healing requires and then rolling his eyes and muttering that he knows Wick is going to ignore him. And Derek literally having sex to heal himself is TW canon and details like that were just born to fuse.
> 
> I renamed all of the chapter titles because I think I'll be adding more chapters with a POV switch to Stiles' dad to explain where he was with all of this. Chapter count will stay the same for now, since I don't have that arc ready to go yet, and this chapter does wrap up this particular "arc."


	6. John

Some days John just wants to go down into the bar he owns, snag a bottle from the bartender stock, and hole up in the far corner under the ugly thing his son insists is both priceless artwork and a commitment to supporting their local community. The thing is, he also owns the hotel that houses the bar and the hotel is full of highly-paid, highly-trained, highly troublesome professional killers who manage to mess up the place dead sober with a full Swiss bank’s worth of reasons to not do so, and those killers rely on him to keep all of that both away from the law and away from each other. So sadly, he has to stay sober (but he’s right about the art).

“Heather, go get Mr. Stilinski his aspirin,” Lydia says, flicking at the touchscreen to send another spreadsheet flying across it. “Now if you keep tracking the purple, you’ll see what I’m talking about with the seven percent increase year-over-year and you did _not_ take your post-dinner dose, don’t try to lie. And refusing it’s just going to make these cost analyses that much more hellish to get through, you know that.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do, I’m not arguing,” John mutters around the hand he’s rubbing over his eye, in a futile attempt to stave off the headache that’s been brewing for the last three hours. He probably should have had that aspirin. “Just maybe not thrilled about the idea that I have a ‘dose’ now.”

Lydia pulls up a graph. “Actuarial tables on the increased lifespan of people in high-stress professions with family history of blood pressure issues and—”

“Look, if I admitted to swiping whiskey from the minibars last month, would you have a table for that?” John says.

She doesn’t even blink. “I have five.” And then, while he’s gaping at her, she checks her buzzing phone, sighs, and hands it over to him. “That’s down from the seven I inherited from Stiles, now that he’s too busy blocking my efforts to streamline our vendor due diligence process.”

John doesn’t want to look. He loves his son, he really does, but also, he knows his son, and he knows that particular sniff in Lydia’s voice, and…he’s the goddamn GM. He takes the phone and reads the text. “What’s he done now?”

Lydia doesn’t reply right away. Stiles’ text to her is saying something about issues with a special order and he might need to switch shifts last-minute so he can drive out and pick up a package from ‘that backwoods wacko with the awesome forge.’ Then there’s a soft _beep_ and John looks up just in time to see Lydia trying to will her computer screen into unfreezing. It’s actually kind of touch-and-go, from where he’s sitting.

Also, he’s got a pretty good idea why. “Are we to that part already?”

“I wouldn’t devote an entire section of our monthly reporting to it if it wasn’t _significant_ ,” Lydia hisses between her teeth. Mostly to the keyboard she’s stabbing her nails into. John thinks. “Listen. Stiles is my friend, and I do not use that word lightly _or_ incorrectly. So I keep very close tabs on a number of performance metrics where he’s concerned and based on this month’s numbers, I’m projecting that he passes out somewhere near live ammunition this week. So—”

“I just told Parrish to take that drive instead, and I’ll see what events we’ve got up that I can take off him, and I’ll—I’ll get him off and talk to him later. I know, I know, I—fuck.” Now John’s phone is buzzing, and it’s that bullshit old-timey _brrring_ that the higher-ups in their world always insist on. Jesus Christ, he can remember a time before smartphones but even he’s not that nostalgic. “Look, I’ll talk to him. And—and thanks for bringing it to me.”

“Don’t make me break in a new head of ops.” Which is Lydia’s dismissive way of letting him know he didn’t have to, but she appreciates his appreciation of her. Of course, then she reaches out and digs a fingernail into his side before he can dodge. “ _Take your aspirin_. You know headaches make him more slippery.”

“I…don’t think that’s the word, at least when you’re talking about my son, but I get the point,” John says. He gets a step towards the door and his phone halfway to his ear, and then his sense of conscientiousness gets the better of him. “The rest of that, you can—”

Lydia’s gotten her monitor unfrozen and already has a whole new set of spreadsheets up on it. “Highlight summary already sent, and set to resurface to the top of your email every four hours till you scroll all the way through it. Also…good, Heather, do me a favor and get Braeden on the phone while you’re still up. I have some questions about these backhoe expenses.”

“Thanks,” John says, taking the cup of water and aspirin Heather’s holding and then making his escape while he can. His head of security, he wouldn’t trade for all the money and a considerable number of the buried bodies in the world, but Jesus, he always feels lucky to get out of his monthly with her.

So he heads down to the bar to take the call. _Not_ for a drink, for the fact that outside of the Management offices (which he’s happy to leave to Lydia for a couple hours) it’s the closest place in the hotel with full-spectrum signal jamming coverage.

Okay, maybe it’s because once he gets off his conference call with the other Continental GMs, he can duck into the back and pull something out of the staff stash. God, but he hates it whenever the High Table decides to mess around without letting them know. Sure, they don’t think it’s a big deal since nobody’s using the hotels. Well, that’s the goddamn problem: _nobody is using the hotels_. If they’re all out killing each other, they aren’t inside actually paying for all the fancy overhead everybody wants, and government expense accounts, even for the off-the-books black ops work, have been declining since the end of the Cold War so they can’t rely on those to pick up the slack these days.

Well, hell with it, John’s going to have his one drink and then get back to his…there’s a bloodstain on the tile by the wine chiller.

For a second, John kind of regrets he went for wine (because at least that’s on Stiles’ list of heart-healthy stuff) instead of the whiskey, which is across the room where he would’ve missed the bloodstain. But no, come on, he’s the damn GM. He shifts his grip on the bottle he’s pulling out and reaches back under his coat with his other hand, then turns smoothly to round the chiller and follow the trail further back into the small prep kitchen. Sets the bottle down as soon as he can without it sounding suspicious, then pulls his phone out and checks the room’s sensors. The two near the service door leading to the wine room have been disabled; Lydia has some kind of alert set up for whenever John checks the system because she immediately pings that she’s sending in a team.

“About five, six minutes before they flush the place,” John says.

Nothing happens for a couple seconds, and then somebody lets out a pained grunt. “Fuck. I just needed to sit down and didn’t want everything ringing.”

John frowns, then texts Lydia to have the team stand down. “Argent, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I have a— _fuck_ , I must have dropped—fucking night,” the man mutters, shifting around. He sounds tired and has some kind of injury constricting his chest, from how his voice hitches. “Sorry, I’ll get up, get to my room.”

The Argents have a mixed reputation—well, to be honest, it’s split between sane and shoot-on-sight. Their usual working grounds are also north of here, so John’s not that familiar with them, but he thinks he remembers which one this is, so he eases down the room and then around a big fridge. With his gun still out, but lowered, and when he finally gets in sight of the man slumped between the fridge and a stack of broken-down boxes, he breathes a sigh of relief: he still can’t remember the guy’s name, but he remembers his face and that face is definitely not on the blacklist.

The man looks up at John, squinting through a thick layer of dried blood. His suit would’ve been pretty nice at one point, but half the collar is ripped off and the rest of it is rucked up enough for John to get glimpses of, at the very least, some massive bruising. “Fuck,” he sighs, putting his hand down and gingerly tucking his feet under himself. “I’m up, I’m up, I just…I got dizzy for a sec, figured I’d catch my breath.”

“Yeah, sure.” John holsters his gun and studies the swaying man for a moment, then ducks in and gets the man’s arm and loops it over his shoulders. He moves into the man’s resistance and uses it to propel them a couple steps towards the right door. “You know you should’ve stopped two floors back for the med suite, right?”

He also checks for any current signs of heavy bleeding. Doesn’t see or feel any, and from the way the man’s cursing and twisting around, he doesn’t think the internals can be that bad. Also, while the man clearly isn’t thrilled about John’s involvement, he’s thinking enough to not punch or slam up a knee, so he must recognize John as staff.

“Fuck, I’m going, okay? I’m going, I’m going, I’m…” the man’s struggles falter a little “…not going to medical, looks like.”

“Well, Jesus, if you’re the kind who sneaks in the service entrance and goes through the kitchen instead of passing out in the lobby so the bellhop can stretcher you up, I’ll bet you’re the kind who doesn’t call medical once you’re in your room,” John grunts. The guy’s not built heavy—he’s leaner than John—but he weighs a ton, even when he’s not fighting John. “We have a first-aid station around the corner, you’re going to that at least.”

The man lets out a huffing noise, half-insulted, half-amused. “What, you’re going to tape me up so I can go fall over in the lobby?”

“Get you out of the shit that needs to pass health inspections anyway,” John mutters.

“You still have to worry about those?” the man asks. He sounds genuinely curious.

He also stays compliant for the time it takes John to shuffle them out the door and down the hall to a small room that serves as an office for the bar staff. “Well, yeah. We make special arrangements for the inspections, but still have to have ‘em. And still have to deal with all the regs—sorry, need to get at that cabinet, mind leaning—and honestly, would you want to eat somewhere that didn’t?”

The man ponders this while obliging John by leaning back against the desk. It’s a tiny room, made tinier by the boxes piled up in it, so their knees are jammed into each other, and the man apparently has decided to just cooperate since he plucks a box of tissues from the desk and starts wiping at his face. He looks pretty coordinated but John checks his pupils for concussion anyway. “Not really something I think about, but since you mention it, I guess not,” the man says, and then his eyes snap to John. “I don’t think this breaks a rule. Least, I don’t remember one saying I can’t go back here.”

“No, but it’s still my hotel and I’m not thrilled at the idea of you bleeding all over my kitchen. So I can call medical for you, or you can shut up and let me patch you up,” John says, staring right back.

A flash of irritation goes over the man’s face, followed quickly by one of chagrin. “Shit. You’re Stil—you’re the manager, right?”

“John,” John says, and while the man is grimacing, he brings up the antiseptic-soaked pad he’d been prepping and squishes it down where the dried blood looks thickest on the man’s face.

“ _Fuck_ ,” the man hisses. His hands twitch towards himself, and then he uses obvious effort to force them down to grip the desk.

He’s quiet for the rest of it—mostly looks like he got smacked into a couple surfaces on his left side. The bruising is bad enough around his ribs that John’s biting his tongue about sending the guy to medical anyway, and having that x-rayed, but there’s a fine line between servicing a guest and running their business for them, and John does not cross that line.

“Well, that should hold you to the elevator,” John says, smoothing down the last butterfly strip.

The man doesn’t say anything. 

He’s slumped far enough back that his head is resting against the cabinet behind it, and tilted so that at first, John think he’s reading something on the wall behind John. But then he doesn’t blink, and John realizes that it’s just another one who’s trained themselves to keep their eyelids open a sliver, and he sighs. Reaches up and snaps his fingers in front of the man’s face, then smacks his hand down to pin the man’s hand against his side when the man starts and goes for a knife hidden down a trouser-leg.

“Okay, what’s the room number?” John says.

“I’m fine, I just dozed off for a second,” the man says.

John’s starting to get the whole picture now. “I’m gonna keep my hand here so you don’t run off,” he says, flexing it—the man winces, it’s probably on bruising and John doesn’t feel so guilty about that as he would’ve twenty years ago when his father-in-law first mentioned the Continental to him. Then he holds up his other hand, nice and slow, so that the man can see it. “And then I’m gonna text Ops to find your booking—”

The man’s face spasms a little bit, like he’s trying to wince and barely not-spit in John’s face at the same time. “Fine, look, I don’t—this was a last-minute detour that took too long, and I don’t have a damned coin on me either, and—”

“You have a membership number, don’t you?” John says.

Anger flares up in the man’s eyes, then folds into the kind of bone-deep shame you normally don’t see surviving in people who kill for a living. They usually self-select that out. “I got my family’s, yeah. But I’m not charging it to my f—their damned account. Just point me to the door and I’ll see myself out.”

“Yeah, okay,” John says. He lets go of the man, except for a hand on the man’s shoulder because it’s a tight squeeze by him to the door. And then, when the man’s pushed too far past to reach back and stop him, he pivots his hand and gives the guy a little chop on the side of the neck.

Not hard or anything, man’s already beat-down all over. Just enough so that he doesn’t have to give the guy a full shake-down to feel safe about slinging him over one shoulder. Then he steps out of the room, makes sure that the door locks behind him, and heads down the hall. Pulls his phone out and starts texting reception.

“What…what the _hell_ are you doing?” the man sputters, coming out of it. He wiggles around some but mostly seems to have given up on getting away. 

No rooms unless John wants to shift somebody’s custom check-in time, and he might be having a charitable impulse, but he’s not looking to start a fight. He takes a right at the next turn instead of the left he’d normally take and then punches the button for the staff elevator. “Don’t want you dying in my hotel, I told you, whoever your daddy was. Now, look, I have a forty-head reunion dinner to review menus and security plans for and I don’t want to be late or have to show up in a dirty suit for the client. So do me a favor and don’t make me call security to take you.”

The man starts to say something, then stops. John feels the heels of his hands on John’s back for a second, shifting around, but then they drop off and the man just grunts, so maybe he’s just getting comfortable.

Or maybe he’s just mumbling into John’s back about how kind of too late for dirty suits and pain in the ass and this is why he never liked using the hotels anyway, but John’s not really listening. The trick about properly serving guests, his father-in-law once told him, was that you need to know when they want you to listen to them, when they don’t, and when you need to listen to them anyway. And while the man was kind of an asshole for convincing John that the hospitality industry was all about helping others (it _is_ about that, the same way the story of Moses is just about a guy on a mountain with ten rules), he knew how to run a Continental.

So John hauls the man to the only room he can be sure is still available: his own. Stiles finally got around to clearing out the last of his experiments so the cleaning crew could come in and freshen it up, but they haven’t reverted the suite set-up so it still has its own entrance to the hall, and can be sealed off from the rest of John’s rooms. It’s got a shower, a bed, and…an empty fridge/minibar.

John drops the man off and steps into his side of the suite to round up some food, and Lydia calls him. _“Chris Argent,”_ she says.

“If he’s here to assassinate me, he’s taking his time about it,” John says.

_“If he was here to assassinate you, you wouldn’t even have gotten to say hello,”_ Lydia says, sweet as sugared arsenic. Then she sighs. _“Fine. I won’t mention this to Stiles, and in return, you don’t both end on the wrong end of my tranquilizer darts at the same time. Again. Yes? Yes.”_

She hangs up on him. For a second, John ponders the fact that she reports into him, not the other way around. Then he shrugs and collects some food. When he’s in the kitchen, he catches sight of himself in the fridge’s chromed door and ends up changing suit-jackets too, so he’s presentable for the client meeting. 

“I just needed to sit down for a minute,” is what Chris says when John goes back to the other half of the suite and finds him sprawled on the bathroom floor, half-dressed as if he’d been meaning to shower with one hand gripping the toilet for dear life.

The toilet lid is down. John looks at it, then at Chris’ pale, clammy-looking face. Not really great, but the man’s eyes are focusing and as John sometimes has to remind his staff, they’re running a hotel, not a hospice. So he just nods and holds up the food so Chris can see it. “Gonna leave this outside. If you need more or anything else, call the operator. You don’t need to give them a room number, they’ll know where to bring it if you’re using the room phone. I’ll be back in a few hours, I’ll knock on the other side of the door so you’ll know, but no need to socialize. All right?”

Chris nods with the precision of someone desperately trying to keep his head leveled. Again, John…does not like the look of it, but he’s got meetings and Chris is on the tile and not the carpet. So he nods back and does what he says, and then heads to his meetings. He does text Lydia to put medical on notice and schedule a welfare check if he’s running late, to which she texts him back with a screenshot of a confirmation number timestamped twenty minutes ago. So John gets his ass to his work already.

When he gets back to his rooms three hours later, he’s in the middle of a heated text conversation with Stiles about how enforcing the hotel’s rules doesn’t actually require them to ship proof of death to Russia because they’re not the damn _postal service_ , for God’s sake (Stiles is highly enthusiastic about his duties and John loves his son for it, but half of having a rep is acting like it and Stiles doesn’t quite have that down). He remembers he’s got a guest in Stiles’ old room but after giving the door an absentminded knock, he’s pretty busy with other things. And it’s not like he’s interrupted, or anything else happens that’d remind him.

So all in all, it’s the next day when it occurs to John. He checks the system and the cleaners haven’t been told to come up yet, so he walks over to the shared door and gives it a couple raps before he opens it. “Hey, if you’re waiting on a flight or some—”

The room is spotless. He stands in the doorway, surveying it, and then ventures into the bathroom. Then comes back out. Then he logs into the system and checks the sensors, which all appear to be functioning normally, aside from not showing an exit time for Chris. Which…John might wait to let Lydia know about, since terrifying as she is, he likes her and he’d rather not have to check her into medical for overwork either.

John frowns, something occurring to him, and then he checks the fridge. The food is gone, but sitting in its place is a quarter. It’s bloody. Upon closer inspection, he can distinctly make out a thumbprint on it. Jesus, guests. Sure, for them the world is only their stay and nothing but their stay, and that’s entirely reasonable, but…they just take everything so personally. 

Anyway, when John gets a second, he pulls up Chris Argent’s file and figures out a mailing address, and ships the quarter back via private courier. Then he forgets about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided I want to stick with 'John.' It's just too weird for me at this point in my TW wordcount and mental musings about the characters to change it. Yes, this is kind of hypocritical for somebody who's always nailing TW for inconsistency, but whatever, I'll own that.
> 
> The slightly open eyelids trick is real. I sat next to a guy who could do it for a whole semester in college and it was actually pretty creepy. He'd prop his head and his arm so that it looked like he was squinting at his notes, till you realized he hadn't blinked in ten minutes.
> 
> For those of you who haven't watched the _Wick_ films, a Marker is a little silver charm containing a bloody fingerprint, which is a physical symbol of a blood debt. If somebody gives you one, you can call it in later for any kind of favor, period, and there's a whole enforcement regime that runs through the Continental and all that and basically, Chris is being melodramatic about somebody being nice to him, as he does.


	7. John

_One Year Later_

Everybody knows about the High Table, and the Continental Hotel. Nobody knows about the GM association.

John really has no idea why. It’s not like they hide it or anything, and if you stop and think for two seconds, you’ll figure out that a rule like no business on the premises doesn’t mean a damn thing unless you can enforce it everywhere, which means that the GMs have to be talking to each other. So yeah, they share blacklists. They also swap tips on underperforming vendors, coordinate law-enforcement issues (murder’s _generally_ a cross-border issue, after all), and offer cross-training opportunities for staff. You know, like they’re actually running a business.

Anyway, the first call John gets about Wick came in even before the guy started killing people, from the New Jersey branch’s GM. Aurelio or somebody Aurelio trained handles vehicle sourcing and disposal for pretty much anybody who has the coins in the tri-state area, and he let slip about the car and everybody guessed how it’d go after that. There are a lot of people in the industry who aren’t affiliated with any of the seats on the High Table, don’t give a shit about it so long as somebody’s paying them, and who don’t want to get stuck in the crossfire. New Jersey got the brunt of the booking transfers but everybody in a city with a direct flight from New York saw a sharp uptick. It was great for business. For about a week. Then it started getting messy.

The thing is, if people want a business to run smoothly, they need certainty. They need to know that anybody they hire will show up when they’re supposed to, and the people who get hired need to know that the people whom they’ve been hired to deal with will be where they’re supposed to be. That’s the whole point of having a High Table and a set of Continental hotels: so there’s some order. So people can plan ahead. You can’t really do that if you’re constantly rescheduling your travel plans around whoever pissed off Baba Yaga that week. There is a reason why people like John Wick work for somebody else—because if they were leading their own game, everybody else would have to kill them out of sheer wanting to be able to go out for a goddamn grocery run without coming back to a massacre.

And then that D’Antonio idiot set off Wick again, and the next GM association call is all about how to deal with it. Sure, Winston’s on Wick now, but not before letting the guy go potentially international, so there goes even trying to figure out who can step up as the temporary go-to industry meeting city.

“Well, they did classify us as lower-risk, so at least we only have to upgrade security to Defcon-2 and not all the way to nuclear warfare. Which, I know the guy’s got a rep, but really?” Stiles says once John’s finished filling him and the other department heads in. “Isn’t that, and this is me saying it… _kind_ of overkill?”

John sighs. “He kind of was trained by the Russians, kid. Ask me that when they’ve figured out where all their Cold War missiles are.”

“We’re certified for Defcon-1 anyway, it’d just be a massive hit to the budget this quarter,” Lydia says, already whisking through her spreadsheets. 

Stiles frowns and comes over to stare at her screen. “What? But we just took in two deposits for trade conferences and…oh. Oh, _wow_ , we’ve really spent that much on recarpeting this year already? Wait, that can’t be right. Nobody died last month so where is this—”

“We had to redo the entire seventh floor because _someone_ decided it was fine to send up a guest the raw materials for ricin manufacture instead of redirecting them to procurement, or even our basement clean room,” Lydia says. She irritably taps at her keyboard while Stiles flushes, tucks his head back into his shoulders in a flinch, and then visibly figures out he’s got some kind of defense and starts to glare back at her. 

Well, Stiles can take care of himself when it comes to Lydia, and John is late to a GM association meeting. So he leaves the two of them to work out a game plan and hurries up to his office to take the call, only to get stopped by Erica at the door.

“Private courier,” she says, handing over a thick, heavy package about the size of a coffeetable book. “High Table seal, and it checked out with the scanners. Looks like paperwork inside—what is this, the latest strike-offs from our membership rolls?”

“Thanks,” John says. He starts to pull at the tab to open the package, then stops as he realizes she’s still watching him. “Stiles will let you know if it’s anything you need to worry about.”

Erica pouts. “Stiles is way, way busier inventing new ways to insult guests who think our coffee isn’t burnt to New York standards.”

John looks at her. She keeps pouting, but twirls around and heads off down the hall (his son’s hires are always competent, but the psych screening…really should catch more than it does). He resists the urge to roll his eyes and steps into his office, then fully opens up the package.

Inside is a coffeetable book. At least, that’s the immediate impression John gets, all glossy paper and weighty enough to bludgeon somebody with. He drops it on his desk and prepares to forget about it, because he’s late dialing in and in the current climate, even the GMs are getting paranoid. But then something catches his eye and he glances over again, with his finger right on the speaker button on the phone console.

A second later, he gets hold of himself and dials into the call. Then he hits ‘mute’ and pulls the book over while they’re taking attendance and recapping the last meeting. It’s not a coffeetable book. It’s a…it’s a very fancy prospectus. It has financial statements: profit/loss, summary of current potential liabilities, all that. It has a history section dating back to the turn of the last century, with high-quality reproductions of newspaper clippings arranged in timelines and montages. It’s got profiles of key personnel, including the current head of the group, Talia Hale.

“…agreed to fast-tracking new applicants in light of the increased need for experienced bodyguards and also the increased appetite for career changes in some of our best candidates,” the Rome GM is saying. “I apologize if this seems presumptuous, but as soon as I heard from the High Table, Winston and I put our heads together and took the liberty of sending each of you detailed portfolios on candidates we believe would match well. We both know you’re all extraordinarily overworked and have little time to take on something like headhunting.”

“What the _hell_ ,” John says.

“No, they’re just suggestions. Feel free to take them or leave them,” Rome goes on. “This is all just our best efforts to continue ensuring that no matter what, the Continentals retain their unique neutral status. We’re well aware of the rumblings in the space about this and believe prompt action is the best action.”

“Well, sure, people are gonna complain when you’re making money off them and saying they’re safe with you when they’re not, and you look like you’re playing favorites. So let’s just side with more of them and bring it all in-house,” John snaps.

There’s a long silence, during which he remembers he’s one of the few GMs with family (or at least, family who isn’t living under some private-industry version of the witness protection program) and who doesn’t have a multi-generational track record at this (yet another place they knock the West Coast, the high turnover in hotel management). And then Rome clears his throat and announces the next item on the agenda, and John doesn’t pay attention to that either because he’s remembering he’s still on mute.

He doesn’t really know whether he’s glad or mad at that, but by the time he gets his hand up to the button, they’re too far past the point in the conversation. Besides, he’s a professional, and he knows that’s not the way to make his point if he actually wants people to listen to him. So…he finishes the damn call, participating like the GM he actually is, and then, once it’s over, he rearranges his schedule so that he can spend a good hour and a half going over Talia Hale’s _job application_ for her entire _organization_ to switch into the hotel business with a critical eye. 

…it’s a good application. He can’t even raise the political issue, except generally, since the Hales dropped their affiliation with any High Table seat when they moved to the East Coast a decade ago and have had a spotless record of independence ever since. They aren’t even in conflict with the current seat overseeing the West Coast, since that shook out of the Argent sphere around the same time.

John still thinks hiring ex-hitmen is a problem when the GMs are being accused of letting some of them flout the rules. But he takes the high road and writes an email about it. A nice, reasoned, polite email that he sends to the right committee and all that. Then he checks for immediate disasters in his hotel, and when he doesn’t see any, he heads down to the bar for a drink.

It sort of makes him feel better to see that, by the time he actually hits the bar, he’s got emails or texts from five other GMs agreeing with him. But then the bartender lets him know he’s got somebody waiting on him in one of the private rooms.

“Hi,” Chris Argent says, getting up from what looks like a beer and a crossword.

“Jesus, did they go and schedule in-person interviews for us too?” John says.

Chris pauses, hand halfway out. It’s a hard situation to pull off gracefully, but John has to admit he comes pretty close, tilting his head and pressing his lips together and then taking his hand back with a little reset of his shoulders that’s too neutral to be a shrug. He’s not beaten up, and dressed better but down compared to the last time John saw him: sports jacket over a t-shirt with jeans.

“Sorry, is this a bad time?” he says, and that’s when he winces a little. “I mean, I can guess why you’d go there, considering the last time, but my father’s stone dead now, so—”

This isn’t about the High Table or the GM association, John suddenly realizes. Nope, it’s just about him being an asshole to a guest. “I—sorry, no, it’s not, I just—I came out of a meeting and had my mind on it and it’s nothing to do with you. I’m sorry, that was out of line.”

“Oh,” Chris says. He looks John in the eye for a second, then glances down and away, at his half-finished drink. “If you’re busy, I don’t want to keep—I was in town again and just wanted to thank you, seeing as I just ran out last time.”

“You were a guest, you don’t have to check out in person,” John says, half-automatically, and then the full memory of last time kicks in just as Chris is giving him an odd look. He resists the urge to apologize for being so brainwashed by work that all he can do is spout stuff from the training manual, and just tries to smile like a real person. “Anyway, I figured that was what the quarter was about.”

Chris looks back up at him. The man’s eyes are paler than they come off in photos, and he has a few white hairs here and there; the sandy blond covers that up well. “You mailed that back to me,” he says. He pauses. “To my _back-up address._ Only two people in the world were supposed to know that one, and the other one’s my daughter.”

John shrugs. “Well, people leave stuff behind all the time, and we just try to get it back to them.”

Okay, he’s quoting from the manuals again. On purpose. He’s not really sure why, except that he has a gut feeling Chris isn’t going to take it the wrong way and his gut’s actually transferred pretty well from the military to hospitality (they’re both called being in service, his wife used to remind him). And he’s proven right when, in the middle of a small, strangled, disbelieving noise, Chris abruptly snorts. “So I wasn’t misremembering you being an asshole to me.”

“You were bleeding all over my kitchen and being a jackass about it,” John says. There’s a click at the end of the hall and John looks up, then waves over the waiter who’s got his whiskey. He takes the glass and the waiter backtracks down the hall, and then he looks back just in time to catch a smile fading off Chris’ face. “Looks like your stay’s going better this time?”

“Yeah, some. I’m sticking to schedule, anyway,” Chris says. His eyes flick up and down John’s face and then he shifts his body slightly, angling it so that he’s semi-sloping into the room instead of blocking John out of it. “I wanted to buy you a drink, and somebody did tell me if I wanted something in this place, I just needed to ask.”

He’s…reminding John about that rule about not getting too familiar with the guests. While John’s got a whole goddamn reference manual about how they’re now going to be breaking that one with the blessing of the High Table, and…John is a grown, mature, responsible man. Who just really needs to take his mind off his work right now.

“The bar’s mine, all the drinks are mine,” he says, as he takes a step into the room. He gives Chris a second to adjust—one slight eyebrow lift and the other man backs up—and then comes all the way in and shuts the door. “But you want to sit and watch me, I guess there’s no harm in that.”

Which _is_ the plan. Just sit down, chat with the guy, let the whiskey unwind the knots in his shoulders. Rules say no fraternization with guests but hospitality is about being hospitable, and one drink isn’t going to make John forget where the lines should be. It’s just him doing his job with the guests, and also, giving him a reason to not consider his own career switch in light of his fellow GMs’ meddling.

Okay, so Chris is an attractive man, and John’s been on his own for a while and been sitting on a pile of frustration for weeks now that wants to go _somewhere_. Chris is also, when he’s not grunting irritably at John, kind of charming. He seems to think John deserves a full explanation for the clusterfuck that led him to hide in the kitchen, and more than that, an apology, even though really, all he had to say was that he came down on the opposite side of Gerard Argent (fine, the hotels treat all members equally, but John can still have opinions, like maybe Winston could’ve dug up a violation on D’Antonio’s record and kicked him out before things got so bad). 

John asks some questions to be polite and keep the conversation going, and that ends up leading to talking about their kids. Chris has a daughter who’s recently opted to join him in the family business and he’s got mixed feelings about it, and is surprisingly open to talking them out with a near-stranger. 

“Look, she keeps saying I gave her the tools and let her make up her own mind, and if I really want to respect her, then I have to let her do that. And she’s got a point, but I just…” Chris waves his hand over his now-empty glass “…she’s happy. I can tell. I just really didn’t think _this_ was going to be what made her happy. I guess I just wonder if I ever really knew my own daughter, and that’s the whole—that’s exactly why I hated my father, and said I’d never be like him. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”

“No, it does. But if she’s having that kind of conversation with you, that probably tells you whether or not you did end up like your dad, doesn’t it?” John says. He’s just about on his last drop too, and is swirling it around the glass as he watches Chris frown in thought. There’s a long, thin scar threading down the left side of Chris’ face, just before the hairline, and he’s been idly wondering for the past five minutes whether it’s raised enough that he could feel it if he ran his fingertips down it. “I get it. Stiles was actually _born_ in this hotel—on purpose, not because it just happened. It’s this thing of Claudia’s family, and I made sure he worked a year outside. I just wanted him to know he could, and you know, he still complains about how boring that year was.”

Chris snorts, then pulls himself up. His jacket gets a little twisted on one side and he reaches up to tug it straight, then keeps his hand in his collar to scratch at his throat, pulling the t-shirt away to show a tan line. “I guess if your kids can still surprise you, at least you know you haven’t brainwashed them.”

“Yeah. True.” It’s been…John grimaces, suddenly realizing how long he must have been sitting here. It was towards the end of his day, but that Talia Hale thing—he needs to get going on that.

He gives his whiskey a last swirl, then downs the dregs. Sets the glass down, inhaling, about to excuse himself, and looks up to find Chris half-risen from his seat, hands flat on the table between them, with this slow simmer in his eyes and. Fuck.

“I read the rules,” Chris says, in a very different voice from the casual, sometimes rueful, sometimes amused one he’d been using while they talked about their kids. “Yeah, I know. But here’s the thing—I lost my membership when the Argents got struck off and haven’t gotten around to reapplying yet for me and Allison. I mentioned it at the desk and they said I couldn’t go up past this floor but I still could wait in the bar.”

“That—is—yeah, that’s about right,” John says after a moment. The whiskey seems to have numbed his tongue; it feels sluggish in his mouth.

Must have done something to the rest of him, too, because he just sits there as Chris nods, studies him for a second, and then pushes back and drops under the table. So there are rules and there are the reasons for the rules, and the reasons say John should do something. 

John doesn’t. Seconds later, he’s looking down at the top of Chris’ head as Chris works John’s cock into his mouth, one hand under John’s balls to keep them from dragging against the seat. It’s good and hot and tight and every so often Chris drags the heel of his other hand along John’s inside thigh, this hard pressure that seems to push up right into John’s gut, right into the coiling knot of it all, and John barely keeps himself to hoarse, curt noises that sound too loud anyway. He can’t remember what the soundproofing level is down here and it irritates him, and he digs his nails into the edge of the table he’s suddenly hanging onto and his hips jut forward.

It catches Chris off-guard. He gags and John grimaces and forces himself to pull back, but then then Chris makes this—this _annoyed_ noise, like it’s on him. And then he pushes his shoulders up in this determined way and sucks back that inch he gave up, and John—John yanks his hands off the table and shoves the man back hard. Because if he doesn’t then, he knows he’s never going to be able to.

Chris lets out a surprised grunt, then grabs at John’s arm. “Wait—what—”

He thinks John’s stopping it. John snorts at the idea of that and keeps shoving as Chris squeezes up from under the table, jamming his leg forward and then leaning on it, leaning it into the ridge of Chris’ erection as Chris ungracefully twists and hitches and eventually gets himself up onto the table. The way he came up, his neck was there so John checks out that hairline scar with his tongue. Chris swears, then shudders, his fingers balling up into John’s shirt. 

“Gonna do this, gonna fucking see you this time,” John hears himself grunting. He pulls at Chris’ jeans till he gets them open, then flaps at their shirt-tails till those are out of the way and they can press their cocks together. It’s not perfect, sweat lubes you till it doesn’t and then the friction stings, but it feels _good_. “Need another goddamn room, fucking pay for it this time.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Chris groans. His fingers inch up till one hand’s hooked over John’s shoulder. He arches up against John again and again, breath hot and fast in John’s ear. “Kind of—kind of the idea, but you keep—not taking it—”

“Well, I’m goddamn human,” John says, and then his climax hits him and he ends up biting Chris’ shoulder till it bleeds.

Through the guy’s shirt, even. He should feel embarrassed.

“I got it wholesale, cost about two bucks, who cares,” Chris mutters five minutes later, doing his damnedest to feel up as many body parts of John as he can during the elevator ride to John’s suite. “Take it out of my membership deposit.”

John pushes him against the wall, not gently. He hisses and stretches his shoulders like a cat John just rubbed the very best right way, and John swears as he chases Chris’ tongue back into Chris’ mouth. “The hell are you buying wholesale for? Your side got the assets, didn’t they?”

Chris stiffens in a way that makes John wish he’d kept his mouth shut. But then the other man kisses back even harder, as if thinking about it just makes him even more determined to make John rediscover his teenager years. “Ditched them, didn’t want the strings, just—you have something back there, right? Don’t tell me we have to call down for—”

“I got something, I got something not gun oil, okay,” John reassures him and they pile out of the elevator and into the hall.

Two minutes to the room. One to dig an acceptable tube out of the bathroom, and five to John’s cock in Chris’ ass. Bending Chris over the armchair because they couldn’t make it to the bed, watching the sweat drip off his forehead onto the fists Chris is using to wad up a third of the seat-cushion as he moans and shivers under John. _Jesus_.

“I really needed that,” John admits, very quietly, into Chris’ nape.

Chris is still moaning a little, twisting weakly through the aftershocks, so John doesn’t think the man hears. John puts his hands down on Chris’ hips to steady him, then starts rubbing them in long, slow strokes up the man’s sides to help ease things down. 

“Fuck,” Chris eventually gasps. He drops his head down against the cushion, breathing. 

John moves his hands back to Chris’ hips. Then he presses down, getting ready to pull out, and Chris pushes his arms out in front of him to grab the far arm of the armchair and stretches himself, letting out a long, satisfied sigh, while his body _flexes_ around John’s completely softened cock like it thinks a third round’s a good idea. It’s kind of disturbing how close John’s body comes to agreeing.

“ _Fuck_ ,” John hisses, jerking his hands down to the chair for support. “Jesus, are you trying to kill me?”

Chris says something, John thinks, but John doesn’t hear it because right then his phone trills. His pants are still down tangling up his ankles and his phone’s in the pocket and that ringtone means. Fuck.

John fishes it out and puts it to his ear. “Yeah?”

Under him, Chris stops moving. In retrospect, John probably should’ve missed the call, pulled out, and then taken it in the bathroom. Or in the other part of the suite. He can read Chris’ uncertainty about the situation in the way the man’s head cocks and—

_“John? It’s Talia. I’m sorry for weaseling this number out of Winston but he owes me for just springing my application on you like that,”_ Talia Hale chirps. _“My family might not meet his ‘classy’ standards but he should know better, and that wasn’t even a complete draft! We hadn’t finished up the appendix with all of the provenance details and I’ve heard your son’s a stickler for those. Anyway, I wanted to call and apologize and see whether we can make the best of it?”_

“Oh,” John says. He starts to pull out of Chris so the man won’t overhear any more and Chris makes a noise. Then hunches up, clearly feeling bad about it, but—shit. “I’m in the middle of something, sorry. Can I call you back?”

Talia sounds as if he’s just presented her with an unexpected penthouse upgrade. _“Of course! My plane touches down in fifteen, so I’ll be over by ten at the latest.”_

“Wait,” John says, as she’s hanging up on him.

He looks at the phone. Then at the room in general. Then at the phone. Then he sighs and pushes backwards and right, Chris. Who takes it pretty well, after the first stiff-backed second, and carefully turns around as he sags down to sit on the floor.

“I’ll keep that to myself,” Chris says, looking up at John.

“Yeah, you need to,” John says, and then grimaces because that’s goddamn cold. He runs his hand over his hair, then pinches the bridge of his nose. Then makes himself take his hand down because at least he could look Chris in the eye. “I mean, you can use these rooms for now. And we should talk about that later, and—how long are you in town for?”

“I’m done, actually, but I have nothing lined up next and my daughter’s on vacation with her friends,” Chris says. He looks concerned about John, so John must look like he’s on the verge of a breakdown or something like that. “I can hang around a few days and I did actually bring some coins—”

John finally makes up his mind and decides it’s better to at least show up dressed and not smelling of sex than to explain this to Lydia and Stiles when he asks them to handle Talia for him. “Great, okay, we’ll settle up when I’m back. Sorry—I have a—I’m not trying to be an asshole—”

“Hey, I’m here.” Chris raises both hands. “You have a hotel. I get it. I’ll find something to do.”

“Okay. I’ll let the desk know—okay, thanks,” John says, hurrying to the bathroom. Then he stops on the threshold. “Thanks for the drink, too.”

Well, Chris laughs. It makes John feel marginally better about dumping him for goddamn GM bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When the second _Wick_ came out, a lot of reviewers commented on how it made New York seem entirely populated by assassins, which got me thinking--not all of them would be so desperate for the money that they'd go for the bounty on Wick's head. A lot of them probably looked at that text, swore, and about-faced for the airport so they could go earn their payday elsewhere.
> 
> ...I was shocked to see that AO3 doesn't already have a formal Workplace Comedy tag (at least, it wasn't showing up on the list of suggested tags when I typed it in). Whenever Wick isn't on-screen in one of the Continentals, that has to be what's going in with all the staff.


	8. John

Talia doesn’t travel as much as the rest of her family, and when she does, she tends to stay close enough to drive home at the end of the night. She’s only been out at John’s branch twice, and they were both only a little after Claudia’s death, when John had been distracted with having to take over the hotel and take care of Stiles. He’s got her file, but none of the other GMs had added anything interesting except for the Montreal GM, whose sommelier had reported that she was a picky one to handle, and that doesn’t really seem too out of line—surprise, surprise, assassins are sticklers for weapons quality. And, well, he’s got her custom-printed application, too.

Basically, he doesn’t really remember much about her except for a vague impression of no-nonsense attitude and that she’d been taller than Claudia. Except that second one’s wrong because when she strides into the hotel, the top of her head doesn’t quite hit his chin and that isn’t even close.

“John,” she says as her hand intrudes on his field of vision, reminding him now’s probably not the time to check her footwear and figure out the source of the mismatch. “So good to see you again. I only wish it was under less awkward circumstances.”

She kind of showed up without an appointment, John almost points out but then again, maybe that was a mix-up too. Anyway, she’s still a member and the last thing John needs is for the senior GMs to get on his back again about why the West Coast can’t stick with the Continental style and so he smiles and shakes her hand and mutters something about no harm done and was her flight fine?

“Oh, it was all right, but I don’t want to beat around the bush,” Talia says briskly, practically walking _him_ back into his office. Then she seats herself and honestly, he’s surprised she didn’t just go for the big chair behind the desk. “I’ve been looking for a while to lateral my family out of consultant work, which is all well and good when you’re only looking at the year-over-year revenue increase, but overhead has a way of catching you in the third quarter, don’t you think?”

“Ah. Yeah. That sometimes happens,” John says after a second, slowing on his way around to his side of the desk. He suddenly wishes he’d called in Lydia or Stiles, but he’d been thinking those two had enough on their plate without him springing Talia on them last-minute. He hasn’t—shit, he didn’t even get around to sending out that email about the GM association call. “But I think—I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t had a lot of time to go over—”

Talia sighs. “I can imagine, and that’s why I was so annoyed at them for sending over the application. It wasn’t even meant for you.”

John starts to sit down. Pauses to check that the chair is where he thinks it is, and then finishes sitting. “It wasn’t?”

“Well, I had no idea who they were going to forward it to. Winston just asked us to put together a dossier, and I sent him a rough draft to see if that’s what he had in mind,” Talia says, tone frank and frankly frustrated. She crosses her legs and then folds her hands over her knees, which had pulled out from under her skirt. She’s supposed to be a couple years older than John but John absently thinks he should check that one, too. “Then he told me he’d sent it on to _you_ , and I immediately wanted to send you an apology bouquet because I _knew_ it wasn’t going to be what you’d want.”

“I…” John says. He’s really trying to remember where the hell else they could’ve run into each other, in between now and the last time she’d stayed at his hotel. What did he do to earn a bouquet?

“And that’s terrible because to be completely honest with you, your branch was the one I’d decided we should push for, if we got any kind of say, and I really could wreck a couple of his rooms over Winston doing that,” Talia goes on. From the way she sounds and the way she’s slightly widened her eyes, she appears to be sincere. It’s just—she’s so earnest about it, and she’s the head of a well-respected—if regional—group and she really shouldn’t care so much about John’s opinion. That’s not how guests and hotels work. “Anyway, I sat down and thought about it, and decided since the damage had already been done, the best thing would be to come myself and save you the trouble of wading through all those pages. What do you want to know about us? What’s the best way for us to make this easy for you?”

John opens his mouth. Closes it. Thinks about yanking out his phone and running off to deal with the first emergency that pops up, because he’s got to have something. Fuck, he wishes he’d had a second drink with Chris—and _fuck_ but he’s got to figure that one out too. Fuck. This is why he hates GM association calls.

“Look, I appreciate it a lot, you coming out and explaining everything,” he starts slowly, both so he doesn’t say something that’ll make this even harder to fix and so that he can buy himself some time. “It was kind of a—thick book—”

“Yes, I was assuming it might go to one of the branches where none of us have ever even stayed,” Talia says with a fresh sigh. She leans back in her chair and brushes a strand of hair back from her face; in the process what had looked like a couple silver hairs tugs out into a broad streak. It doesn’t make her look any older, or less polished. “I realize we’re not as well-known as we used to be, and I was a little…some of the overseas branches seem to prioritize prestige over everything else. Then again, I’m probably speaking out of turn since I’ll be the first to admit we’ve little experience in the hotel—”

“Eh, you’re not that far off,” John says before he can help himself. Which he should probably stop doing, the whole dropping trade secrets thing.

Talia looks a little startled, and then she produces a warm smile. “A few things are the same on either side of the fence, I suppose. I…my family very much misses this area. I don’t regret moving us to the East Coast, but I think we’ve been there long enough. We’d love to come back.”

“I thought you were pretty clear so far as that goes,” John says, frowning. “The High Table sorted out all that—the Argents broke up and after that I heard you had decent relations with—”

“No, we do. It’s not a political block, it’s…” Talia’s mouth twists, a little rueful, a little something else that John can’t immediately place “…pride. It’s fine when we’re on the other side of the country, but coming back here and having to claw our way back to where we had been—which is what we’d have to do, just for the sake of security.”

No, John knows what it is. He sees that every time he gets off a GM call and goes into the bathroom to take a couple breaths and convince himself he’s not going to open an account on another GM for telling him how he’s going to cover up their mistakes. He might be new to the business compared to _them_ , but at this point he’s got over twenty years in the game and raised a son in it to boot. He thinks he knows what he’s doing.

“I’ll admit, that was one reason why I thought we would be a good fit for your needs,” Talia adds after a moment. She’s watching him. She’s still being sincere as far as John can tell, but that doesn’t mean she can’t watch his reaction and calibrate accordingly. “Your branch has a little bit of an independent streak—at least, that’s what it seems like on the outside. I think it’s a good thing—I think we can fossilize like any other field, and it’s good to have a few who try to keep the blood fresh. I’d hate to see that go down in this Wick business, just because the others want to close ranks.”

John looks sharply at her. She returns his stare with a nonprovocative gaze that still doesn’t back down an inch. She knows exactly what she’s saying, and what she thinks he’s going to read between the lines. Which…means she knows it might play badly too, considering all he’s got to do is call the other GMs, and she’s willing to take that risk. Seems like an odd bluff to make at her level—unless it’s not a bluff.

His head hurts. His mouth’s dry too, and it suddenly occurs to him that whiskey plus sex with no water in between is probably a bad idea. “Well, noted,” he says. “Appreciated. But I—look, I’ll level with you, this isn’t going to get settled today.”

“No, of course not. If I were you, I’d hardly jump into this kind of thing just based on a few old meetings and one face-to-face,” Talia agrees serenely. “I just wanted to make myself as accessible as I could, since I know you’re probably swamped as it is. I did rush here before I made a booking, but I don’t want to put you through more troub—”

“It’s a hotel, I have rooms,” John’s hotelier instincts spit out before he can stop them. “Hell, I’ll put you up in my suite if we’ve got nothing.”

Talia blinks in surprise, then gives him that warm smile again. “Excellent. Thank you, John, I very much appreciate _you_.”

* * *

There aren’t any free rooms, and when John checks in with his son, he barely gets his head in before Stiles is off ranting about Erica and Boyd and last-minute shift changes when he’s got a full room changeover and they’re out of the _carpet_ , Dad, and it’s a corner suite and everybody’s going to notice the one room with the slightly darker taupe. So John decides he’ll just leave Stiles out of this one. Kid works hard enough as it is, he can just deal with the GM bullshit once John’s finished kicking the big lumps out of it. So John just needs to figure out where to put Talia.

“I’m getting the room freshened up,” he lies when he returns to his office. “By the way, you need anything? When’s your luggage coming?”

Talia is still sitting where he left her, but she’s taken a weapons catalog off his desk and is browsing through it. At least, that’s what he thinks she’s doing, and then she looks up and he sees her phone screen and realizes she’s price-shopping. Also, that his current small-arms vendor is absolutely _not_ giving him a market-standard discount.

“Oh, it’s not,” she says. Then she tracks his eyes to the catalog and looks embarrassed. “Sorry, I just thought I’d look up going rates these days. We’re in the middle of selling off some of our surplus.”

“Well, I can always get more copies where that came from, so go ahead and keep it,” John says. Seeing as she just gave him the answer to his problem, he can afford to be generous. “If you’d like, I can show you down to the cellar while we’re waiting on the room. My sommelier’s always happy to connect people.”

“That would be perfect,” Talia says. She shuts the catalog and gets up out of her chair, and John breathes a sigh of relief. Of course, then she turns to him. “Though if it’s at all possible, do you think I could use the bathroom first?”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, sure.” Which is the exact opposite of what John wants to say, because the nearest bathroom is a backoffice bathroom and he’s been damn lucky so far to keep Talia out of sight of any of the staff.

The next nearest bathroom is in his suite. Which he’s been trying to avoid, since Chris is in there. At least, John hopes he’s still in there. John…probably should loop in Lydia, just so somebody’s tracking these people.

John needs to stop stalling before Talia stops patiently looking at him and starts looking as if she’s just going to find a toilet herself. “This way,” he says, pulling out his phone as he gets the door for her. “Sorry, I need to make a call, but just follow me.”

Talia says something about not minding at all and then comes along as he heads down the hall, talking to Lydia’s voicemail (he knows she’s in a staff meeting, it’s the one thing today that’s really broken his way) about how they need to clear up that breached warranty on the carpark sensors. It’s not codewords or a voice-activated trigger or any of the stuff Stiles tries to talk him into every time his son and Lydia come back from a trade show, it’s just cover for when he has to open the door to his suite and ends up fumbling the key. Loudly. With cursing and a couple knocks of his foot and knee against the door before he gets it open and…

His place looks spotless, right down to the lack of damp spots on a certain armchair. Kind of familiar, John thinks. “There’s a connecting suite from when Stiles—my son—was younger,” he says, pointing out that door. “He’s gotten all his stuff out and I was thinking that would work for you once we get it all tidied up, but for now, bathroom’s that way.”

“I’m sure I’ll be all right,” Talia says with a smile. “I’ll figure out things.”

“Well, call if you have questions, I’ll just be here catching up on my email,” John says.

She nods and then disappears into his bathroom, right as John’s phone buzzes. He glances down, then looks again. Lydia, who’s supposed to be training people on the new arms-rotation system, has texted him that she _approves keeping Stiles from a total meltdown but only if you send over bullet points on the GM call within 24 hours and a full brief in 48._

Lydia works _for_ him, John thinks irritably, and that’s when something else gets his attention. Or someone else.

“What are you doing?” he hisses at Chris, who’s popped up out of nowhere. “You were supposed to head into the other room!”

“Yeah, I know, I went but then I looked around the corner and saw it was Talia,” Chris says. He’s dressed, anyway. His hair’s a little rumpled on one side and John really does not need to be noticing that kind of thing right now, let alone getting distracted with trying to remember when that happened. “So I came back and not to _kill_ her, okay? I’m gonna follow the rules.”

John snorts. 

“The rest of them,” Chris amends, a touch of red in his cheeks. Disappointingly, it only lasts a second and then he’s all business. “You should try to get her to leave her coat. She keeps garotte wire in the seams.”

“Just in the coat?” John frowns. “What’s she use when she can’t keep that? That sounds like it’d be inconvenient a lot of the time.”

Chris starts to answer, but then the toilet flushes and he turns it into a wince instead. John grimaces and looks around for the nearest—he looks back, and Chris has tucked himself back into wherever he’d been hiding in the first place (everybody John meets being extremely well-trained at that sort of thing actually becomes useful once in a while).

“Ah, thank you, I needed a little splash in the face,” Talia says, coming back out. She’s refolding her coat over one arm and looking down at that, and then she looks up at John. Something wary passes through her eyes and John thinks Chris must have left a—no, she’s just squinting an eyelash or something like that out of her eye, since she puts up one hand next to rub at that. “A transcontinental is still a transcontinental flight, even if it’s a luxury charter.”

She looks a lot perkier than John does, but still, he feels a small pang of guilt at not thinking about that. Guilt and annoyance, because for God’s sake, he runs a hotel. Thinking about travel is his job. “If you’re tired, we could put it off to the morning.”

“Oh, but I thought the room’s not ready yet?” Talia says, taking her hand down.

Damn it. Granted, John’s had a very long day at this point, but still. He’s better than that. “No, but I…I can figure out something,” he mutters, taking his phone out. “Sorry about this, we’re just temporarily short of rooms—”

“I thought I saw them carrying in new carpeting,” Talia says, her brows rising. “Trouble?”

John starts to deny it, and then remembers who he’s talking to and just looks at her.

“I know, but really, if they’re opening up applications for hotel security, that says something without your having to admit it.” Her smile’s both sympathetic and probing. “I’m hardly going to go about spouting about it, seeing as I’m here to convince you we can fix the problem.”

“Well, anyway, let’s head to the…damn it,” John says, glancing at his phone and suddenly seeing a text from his sommelier. He looks up at Talia, who stays silent but looks a dozen questions at him (all polite but clearly not about to let the matter go), and then back at his phone. His phone that’s telling him his sommelier’s gone home sick, on top of everything. “The cellar’s temporarily…it’s not available, sorry. I…we can…look, have you eaten yet?”

Talia shakes her head.

“Okay, then,” John decides. “You flew all the way out here to see me, the least I can do is buy you dinner.”

* * *

They don’t eat at the hotel. John might live there, but it’s not like he’s rooted to the place and Talia reassures him that she doesn’t know of any immediate threats to her in the area, so he drives them to a nice, lowkey spot about twenty minutes away. One that’s not popular with anybody who might spot them and let Stiles know.

Once they’ve ordered, John excuses himself to duck into the men’s room and text Lydia with instructions about cleaning up Stiles’ old suite for Talia. He’s not quite sure what to do about Chris: the easiest option would be to just lock the connecting door and then pull out the couch (he’s _trying_ to be decent) on his side for the man. But then he wonders if he should even be asking Chris to stay over—he didn’t want to leave like _that_ but…he isn’t the kind of guy who promises what he can’t do either. And at the very least, promising he can make a good relationship decision when he’s in the middle of GM bullshit isn’t something he can do.

 _There’s a staff bunk free, but then we’ll have to tell Stiles_ , Lydia texts without the slightest prompt from him. He hasn’t even mentioned Chris. _Or we could send him home with someone. Erica’s volunteered._

John immediately grimaces, and almost calls her. _How does she know?_

 _She was nagging me about your package so I’m using her. It keeps her from getting worse,_ is her response.

He makes another face at his phone, then decides hell with it, he will call, and—that’s when there’s a soft thud in the hall, closely followed by a long, uneven, scraping noise.

Besides him, the bathroom is empty. Like a lot of places, it’s towards the back and right next to the freight entrance, so in all likelihood, it’s just a cook wheeling supplies in with a creaky hand-cart. Something like that. No reason for his instincts to be going on alert whatsoever. Anyway, he’s the GM of a Continental hotel, which means the only person less likely than him to be targeted is the goddamn Pope—or at least, that’s how it was up till Wick decided to upend everything.

John switches to a mapping app and messages Lydia with his coordinates, then puts his phone away and pulls out his gun. The walls here aren’t so thick that he can trust them to stop a bullet, so he gets over towards the sinks to decrease the favorable angles and then slides up towards the door. He gets lucky because it opens out, towards the direction where the noise came from, so at least the blind spot will be smaller.

Just as he’s reaching to palm the knob, the scraping noise starts up again, and then there’s a second thud, louder than before. He also hears somebody cursing and he…he opens the door and at the other end of the hall, Chris looks up from where he’s jamming a leg into a crate. They point guns at each other for a second.

“Sorry,” Chris mutters. He puts his away and then turns so his side’s to John, getting both hands into the crate and then heaving all of his weight down onto them. The leg slowly sinks below the top of the crate and Chris lets out a relieved grunt, then hastily scrambles the crate top over it. “Out in a second.”

“I thought you said you were done,” John says.

Chris twitches a little. “Yeah, me too,” he says after a long pause.

He’s lying, and lying pretty badly. This has absolutely nothing to do with whatever job brought him to town and—well, it’s none of John’s business. He doesn’t know how Chris schedules his gigs and he’s not supposed to know.

“Okay, well, what was…” John glances at the side of the crate “…guess I’ll pass on the fish in that case.”

“Fish is fine, he was looking at the tomatoes,” Chris mutters.

“Right.” Then John remembers and puts his gun away. He gets his phone back out and is halfway through texting Lydia to stand down when something else occurs to him. “You weren’t following me because—you and Talia don’t have something—”

Chris looks up sharply. “No,” he says a little quickly. He keeps shoving at the crate lid for another second, then stops and looks again at John. “No, I’m not, I just—ended up here. I need to get this out of here.”

“Okay,” John says. Lying through his teeth, that’s what Chris is doing, but what John is doing, or supposed to be doing, is having a meal with Talia. “You want me to call you somebody for that?”

“No, I got it,” Chris says. He gets the crate lid snapped down on both sides, then absently rubs his hand against his side; the hinge must have pinched it. “You mind maybe leaving before anybody comes looking for you?”

John shrugs and raises both of his hands as he backs up a step. That earns him an annoyed look from Chris, though Chris still…well, looks. At John, and not at the crate, which means his hand slips a little when he tries to tug it off the one beneath it. He mutters a curse and fully turns around and squats down to get at the crate, and John…leaves. He was asked to, after all.

“Oh, there you are,” Talia says when John comes back out. She blinks rapidly and her hands are both under the table, making the tablecloth ruffle a little. Then she gives him an embarrassed smile and pulls them up to show she’s texting somebody. “Still have to tend to the current business.”

“Take your time.” John sits down and reaches for his water glass, only to realize that they still haven’t been filled. He frowns at it, then looks around the room for a waiter. Sure, it’s late, but this place is modeled after those twenty-four-hour French brasseries, and anyway, John wouldn’t have taken Talia over if he expected the service to be shitty.

Talia clears her throat slightly, then shrugs when John looks up. “I haven’t seen anyone since they took our order,” she says. She twists to tuck her phone back into her purse, then glances towards the kitchen. “Do you think we should—”

Chris is dragging a body out of there, and while John’s positive it wouldn’t shock Talia either, it just isn’t good manners to let professionals cross paths like that, even off hotel premises. “No, I’m—they might just be backed up but they’re cooking, I saw them when I was just back there.”

“Well, I suppose that could be true,” Talia says, politely, while she looks at all of the unoccupied tables all around them. 

John grimaces and then spots the bartender across the room, who’s serving the few other people in the place. “I’ll just get something from the bar—you want anything besides water?”

“I wouldn’t mind a glass of red, to be honest.” Talia lifts one hand and briefly rubs at her temples. “The headache always seems to wait till a couple hours after the flight to start.”

“Red, got it,” John says sympathetically, getting back up.

The bartender’s as surprised as he is to notice the lack of staff, saying there’s definitely two waiters still on shift. She gets John water and Talia’s glass of wine, throws in a basket of rolls, and then calls to her barback to check in the kitchen. Then asks John to stay another second while she roots around and sees if she’s still got butter or jam to go with the rolls.

It’s kind of rude, just leaving Talia at the table by herself for so long, but when John looks over, she seems fine. She’s back to texting whoever it is, with an intently annoyed expression on her face that makes her seem a lot more approachable than the constant smothery offers of help. Once she even pauses to sit back and roll her eyes.

“Here you go,” says the bartender, handing over a ramekin of butter just as the barback returns to report no sign of one waiter and the other’s gone for at least ten minutes on an emergency run to buy more onions. “What? Jesus, I’m sorry,” she says to John. “This is—look, I’ll head back and make sure your orders are up till we figure this out.”

“Thanks, that’d be great,” John says. He starts collecting all the glasses and the bread basket, and then looks down at them.

The bartender catches onto his brainwave and invites him and Talia to come sit at the bar for now, so he leaves everything there and goes back to fetch Talia. “That’s very strange,” she says, coming along.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, usually this place is better than that. They cater more to the after-shift crowd—and it’s late but it’s actually still a little early for that, so I’m surprised they aren’t knee-deep in prep,” John says. The two of them get seated and then he notices that the bartender ducked off to the kitchen without getting them utensils, so he reaches over the bar and gets a napkin-wrapped bundle for each of them. 

“I meant my wine,” Talia says tartly. “It’s not chilled. It’s French enough to have blood sausage on the menu, they should know what to do with wine.”

John…doesn’t disagree with her, but he’s a bit surprised at how offended she seems to be at the error. For a second, he almost thinks she might take that glass in the back and ram it into somebody’s face.

Talia catches on and immediately reverts herself to charmingly self-deprecating. “I think the day’s just catching up with me,” she says. The bartender reappears with what looks like their starters—soup for John, a salad for Talia—and she even smiles with convincing gratitude at the plates. “You know, now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps it’d be better for me to stay away from the hotel tonight? I’ve put you through a lot of trouble on very short notice.”

That would be great. And yet, what comes out of John’s mouth (damn his pride) is: “It’s no problem, we’ll get you a room.”

“Well, I know you will, but really, I’m not so sure this is the foot I want to start off on with you. I’m trying to convince you I can reduce your hassles, after all,” Talia says, with a little tip of her wineglass towards John to soften it. She picks up her fork, then puts it back down. “No, that’s what I’ll do. I can still find my way around and I’ll take care of my lodgings tonight, and stop turning you into my personal tour guide. I’m sure you have things to get back to, John, you really don’t need to stay just to make sure I eat.”

“Look, this is on me, and it should be because we should always be able to look after our guests. That’s what the hotel is for,” John protests.

Talia straightens up, expression a little mulish, and then—she suddenly folds. “All right, all right,” she says. “You can pay for the meal. So we’ll ring up now and then you can go right back and do something more useful than babysitting me. I’ll meet you first thing tomorrow, never fear.”

The bartender looks up attentively and…somehow, John ends up walking back out to his car without Talia, with an appointment for them to reconvene at seven in the morning. Which isn’t going to work, because he’s looking at his schedule on his phone and cursing the reunion event he forgot he’s supposed to be running at the hotel. And also how the hell did she just—

John stops short five feet from his car, looking up from his phone, and puts his hand inside his coat. He stares at his car.

After a few seconds, the passenger side opens a few inches. Nobody’s visible through the windows. “It’s me,” Chris says, and then closes the door.

…John ends up getting in the car. Takes a couple minutes, but ultimately, his choices are to have it out with Chris here, within earshot of Talia, or call Lydia and ask her to do something when he actually thinks he still likes the man. He’s just pretty damn confused.

“I needed a ride,” Chris offers when they’re halfway back to the hotel.

“How’d you get out there?” John asks.

Chris grimaces. “Had to write off the rental.” He gives John a cautious sideways look. “Already handled that, not asking for…just needed a ride back. If you still wanted me to stick around.”

John opens his mouth, then closes it. And then, when they’re pulling into the staff section of the parking garage, he sighs and turns to the other man. “Look, we need to sit down and—talk about it without the drinks. But it’s just…I have an early start tomorrow—shit, I mean, later today, and—”

“Yeah, look, like I said, I don’t have anything scheduled. I can just catch up on sleep or something like that,” Chris says. He’s holding his voice steady but his eyes and posture are saying he’s hugely relieved.

They get out of the car and John waves to Isaac, who’s on valet duty (he trusts that Lydia has informed everybody to keep this out of whatever mess Stiles is currently dealing with) and then scoots Chris towards the freight elevator. It’s not the most conveniently located one, but it’s the one that poses the least chance of taking them where they might cross paths with Stiles.

“That one back at the restaurant?” John says.

Chris makes a face. “ _Unscheduled_ clean-up,” he says, a trace of irritation getting into his voice. He eyes John a little. “I’m as free as you need.”

John snorts and turns around and they look at each other; Chris’ chin is slightly raised and his clothes are…clean, but rumpled enough that it reminds John of the time a year ago and the elevator pings for their floor right then.

“I need to get up in six hours,” John says.

“Okay,” Chris says, making it sound as if he really wants John to reconsider that.

John hisses under his breath and stalks down the hall, with the other man trailing behind him. He gets them into the suite before somebody sees and then turns around and Chris steps up and his ass somehow seats itself right in John’s hands and why are John’s hands even there?

Hell if he knows, but Chris’ tongue is playing havoc in his mouth and Chris has one hand twisted in John’s suit-jacket as if he wants to tear that off and. Well, okay, John gives it a minute. A good, solid minute, at the each of which Chris groans a protest as he sags back. “You really have to get up,” he says, not exactly a question, or a curse.

“Yeah.” John needs to catch his breath, and then he notices the faint bloodshot web starting to take over the whites of Chris’ eyes. “You could use some sleep, too.”

Chris nods. They stand there for a couple more seconds, then slowly peel their hands off each other. John starts to point towards the bathroom, having picked up on a slight whiff of dried sweat on the man too, and Chris sighs and goes while John finds him some spare clothes to sleep in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who haven't seen the _Wick_ movies: the "sommelier" in a Continental hotel also is an in-house weapons expert who will make sure you're properly outfitted for any kind of occasion, from firearms to bulletproof evening-wear.
> 
> I've talked about this in other notes, but I really think the show missed an opportunity to flesh out Talia better, and explain why she allowed Peter around her kids for so long (Peter's a favorite character of mine, but if he existed in real life, we'd be calling Talia a negligent mother for letting him stay with her). I've fleshed out a couple takes on it, but I think the one most supportive of a good comedy is for them to get on each other's nerves because they're both charming, manipulative, slightly amoral types who get just a little too cozy with you.
> 
> Mental subtitle for this arc: "Stoics drive each other crazy while Talia rolls them up."
> 
> ETA: Not taking lectures about chilling/not chilling red wine. It's an area of "controversy," which I don't understand since the references I've consulted seem to be time- and culture-dependent, and anyway the stance I've had Talia take is on purpose, was done after research, and to me, is in line with the references and the setting of the story. This is not an error and you personally can drink your wine however you like.


	9. John

They don’t get around to talking that night, and the next morning (five hours later, once John brushes his teeth and plows through a couple emails), John wakes up to the smell of pancakes and bacon. He is…pretty sure he let Chris into Stiles’ old suite, because he really, honestly, needed to get rest more than he needed to do something—something stupid—but when he walks out, Chris is sitting on his couch and eating a forkful of flapjack, while a small stack, glistening with butter and maple syrup, obviously fresh from the pan, sits waiting for John on another plate.

“I get free room service,” John observes.

Chris’ mouth is full, so he reaches around himself and picks up the tray that the kitchen usually delivers to John: cereal, pitcher of skim milk, fruit bowl. And the quality of all of that’s just fine, don’t get John wrong, but it’s…cereal. And those are pancakes and bacon. And coffee.

John’s human. He sits down to the pancakes and Chris shoves away the other tray, and the two of them have breakfast.

They…still aren’t talking. Chris doesn’t seem to be expecting it or anything, just munching and skimming some news headlines on his phone. He does glance up at John every so often, but that’s mostly so that he can check the level of the coffee in John’s mug for potential refills. Because maybe he’s secretly auditioning for a waiter position around here, and that explains the last twenty-four hours.

Yeah, John’s still nowhere near caught up on the sleep he needs, but he’s already being pinged by his staff, and it’s not even the damned reunion. Erica and Lydia want to squeeze in some kind of report on Stiles and every time he sees that subject line pop up, his stomach rumbles for the antacid.

“Need some more?” Chris says. He waits out John’s start (look, the guy might be sitting right in front of John but he was _quiet_ ) and then offers up the last of the bacon.

“No. No, I’m—this was good, by the way. You’re a good cook,” John says.

Chris doesn’t exactly smile, but he does slurp his coffee in a satisfied way. Two of his knuckles are freshly scabbed, John notes.

“Look, so…I’m—it’s not—we’re kind of in the middle of a lot of changes right now,” John says. Wincing as every word comes out of his mouth, because God, but does he sound like the kind of shallow asshole he doesn’t mind blacklisting. “Yesterday was—I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it if I could do it over again, but right now’s just—”

“Oh.” Chris looks up and into John’s eyes, and for a long second John has to watch the ease in the man drain away. But…well, it’s small consolation, but at least Chris doesn’t look shocked or bitter. Actually, he doesn’t even look hurt—disappointed as hell, but he doesn’t seem even the least bit inclined to be mad at John about it. “No, I know. I mean, we’ve all been hearing things since New York and…I wasn’t on your schedule either.”

John winces again. “Yeah, but—I do want it clear, it’s not that I’d mind you being on it—” at that, Chris gets very focused and a tiny part of John thinks that should be alarming and it’s kind of not “—but it’s just now isn’t the greatest time. Sorry.”

“It’s not like any of it came from something you did,” Chris says. He holds John’s gaze for a moment longer, then drops his head. Slouches back and wipes his mouth and hands off on a napkin, then starts pulling together all the used plates and utensils. “I don’t want to get in your way. I’ll check flights after I get these and see what’s available.”

It is the closest damned thing, but John just stops himself from telling the man absolutely don’t do that. Because that is childish and irresponsible, and John has a hotel to run. “Don’t just disappear, all right?” he mutters, as his phone’s buzzes get closer and closer together. “I said just right now.”

“So you want to schedule something?” Chris says, looking up.

Half out of his seat, John freezes. “Sure,” he says without thinking. Then he rolls his eyes at himself. “Shit, I sound like a…just leave me a number that’s not a goddamn post-office box in Manitoba, how about that?”

“I’ll hold off on the new membership application too. Not much business around here for me anyway,” Chris says.

Something about the way he does it, maybe the casualness of it, makes John look at him again, but he’s busying himself with tidying up. It’s just—if John doesn’t get the door, Erica and Lydia are going to break in and even with coffee in his stomach, he’s not dealing with that.

* * *

“Yeah, so we’re thinking we might lock Stiles in that one office again till he naps,” Erica sums up. “Permission to temporarily kidnap your son?”

John sighs. “Don’t put it like that.”

Erica continues to look expectantly at him, with the kind of eyes a lot of people ignorantly refer to as kitten eyes without realizing those kittens eventually grow up into animals who can clear out a whole barn of rats in a week (John actually is a cat person, he’s just realistic about it). Lydia doesn’t even bother looking up and just keeps on handing John things to sign.

“Look after him,” John finally says. “And try not to enjoy it so—”

“Battles you can’t win,” Lydia observes, as Erica goes skipping down the hall. She takes back the latest invoice, then tucks her portfolio under her arm. “I rescheduled Talia to lunch for you, because it’s more important that you get in the morning session and settle any seating questions. After that, it should be safe for you to ditch the reunion, and more importantly, you should ditch it because I’m getting rumors of black-market accounts being opened up on Continental staff.”

John starts to protest about Talia because he wanted her first, so he could use the reunion as an excuse to cut her off, and then hears the rest of what Lydia’s saying. His blood goes to ice—then blazes right up. “ _What_. Who—who’s gotten hurt and how bad is it and—”

“Nobody has,” Lydia says, a little hurried. She looks taken aback at John’s reaction, for some reason. “I activated the emergency check and everybody’s answered. We’re already putting measures in place.”

“Yeah. Get me a—never mind, I see the briefing you sent,” John mutters, pulling it up on his phone. “We tracking down where this is coming from?”

He starts walking to the elevator, because if somebody’s trying to target Continental staff, then he damn well isn’t locking up his entire day with reunion planning. They’re getting him for four hours and if anyone gets wishy-washy about the meal after that, they can book their own damn cooks.

Lydia comes with him and hands him a piece of paper. “I had a lead, but it dead-ended at the restaurant you took Talia to last night. Two corpses in the wine-cellar.”

“The _cellar_?” John says. “But that’s not the way that door—wait, so both waiters—”

“Cooks, not a waiter,” Lydia says, eyeing him.

Chris could have been taking one of them, but John is pretty sure he remembers lace-ups on that body and a cook would have had on clogs. Also, he was definitely dragging that crate out to the parking lot, not to the cellar. If he’d changed his mind, he would have had to come back inside where John and Talia would have noticed. “And Talia—”

“Called me five minutes ago to confirm where you two are meeting. Which, under the circumstances, I thought shouldn’t be at the hotel,” Lydia says. She nods at the paper. “That’s your confirmation.”

John gives it a long enough glance to take in the time and address, then folds it up and stuffs it into a pocket. “Make sure Stiles gets some sleep, and don’t do it all yourself either. Parrish usually could use something to do and you can always call Braeden.”

Lydia looks at him. Then takes her portfolio out from under her arm and holds it to her front, not defensively—she makes it very clear just from how she crosses her arms over it that she’s getting ready to thwap him if necessary. “Are you actually going to explain this to me at some point?”

“Yeah, I will, I’ll email when I get done with Talia,” John says, thankful that the elevator is arriving right then. People talk about Wick killing three guys with a pencil but John’s seen Lydia improvise a stiletto out of a manila folder. “I just—I need to deal with her, all right?”

“And I’ll deal with things back here,” Lydia says under her breath. She’s annoyed but willing to let it go for now. “Just so long as I _am_ told.”

“You usually find out before me,” John says as he gets into the elevator. “All right, thanks. Try to have a good day, Lydia.”

The doors close just on time. John takes a deep breath, holds it, and then lets it go. Then he sets his shoulders and gets ready to go see just _who_ thinks they can fuck with him and his staff.

* * *

Event planning for twelve arms dealers who collectively have enough stock to wipe out half the world: easy.

Pulling out that piece of paper and fully realizing that Lydia’s scheduled Talia and John to meet up at a local shooting range associated with the hotel, because somehow that’s better than meeting Talia _at_ the hotel…well, it’s easy to read, but not that easy to understand. Especially when John gets there and finds Talia in the middle of a heated argument with the range owner about the right gel consistency for soft-point bullet targets. Of course, soon as she sees him, she smooths that over, but John doesn’t miss the twitchy eyelid the range owner’s suddenly developed.

“I hope today’s gone more to order for you than yesterday?” she says, unhooking a stock from the assault rifle she’s carrying and setting both aside on a table. She’s completely changed outfits, even though she supposedly didn’t have any luggage with her or coming later. Sure, she could’ve bought the matching clothes to shoes to purse, but John catches a glimpse of her skirt lining as she turns towards him and he knows how long it takes to tailor bulletproof, impact-dissipating synthetics that well. Even if he wasn’t the only guy in town with a tailor who can do that _and_ keep the seams from bunching. “Also, I hope that you’re not going to slip that fool anything for his troubles.”

John jerks his head up, suddenly realizing what it looks like for him to be staring at her calves that hard. “What?”

“Is he really your official ballistics tester?” Talia says, more than a little disbelief whiffing in her voice. Now that it’s just them in the room, she’s showing a bit more personality under the charm than she was yesterday. “Because I have to tell you, I am not impressed in the least. And judging by the ammunition he tried to pass off on me, he’s grossly overcharging you.”

Maybe she missed the whole ogling her legs thing. Which wasn’t what John was doing, not to say that her legs aren’t quite impressive, and hell. He should’ve grabbed a fresh coffee on his way out. “We always check the quality and he’s consistent.”

“Of course, I’d expect nothing less,” she says, toning down some of the disgust in her voice. She offers him a semi-apologetic smile and then leans past him for her purse, which is hanging on the wall. Then she pulls him over—she got his arm at some point, and shows him the same website she’d been looking at in his office yesterday. “I can completely understand paying extra for consistency. I’m also new to this, and there probably are considerations I’m not even thinking of when you’re buying for retail instead of individual use, but…am I off-base with these numbers? We’ve always been quite happy with them, and they do have a wholesale arm.”

Just to be polite, John takes a look, and then a second one. And then he and Talia sit down and Talia starts talking through her family’s armory, the parts that she’s not trying to off-load, and they burn through a good half-hour discussing stock rotation. Which is important, especially when you’re not a specialist but you have to cater to a bunch of specialists, who could walk in at any time and demand a mint-condition, field-ready piece out of a Victorian museum, and your reputation depends on your not even blinking twice at it. Anybody can have a vault of weapons, given cash and eBay—not everybody can make sure those weapons will _work_.

The thing is, weapons rotation is also kind of boring unless you’re a certain kind of wonk, and if most people were one, the military wouldn’t need so many drill sergeants. John does happen to be one, and he’s pleasantly surprised to find that Talia’s one as well (more assassins are terrible about weapons care than you’d think, which John blames on the saturated arms market making it so easy to just buy replacements). “Well, my parents always emphasized the basics,” she says absently, holding up a bullet so that they can look at the join of the jacketing. “Sometimes _over_ -emphasized, especially when it came to politics, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind.”

“Hotels come down to just a couple things too, my father-in-law used to tell me,” John says. “Get them in, get them out, don’t lose anybody in between. That last one gets more complicated than it should be these days, but…”

“Do you think it’s just temporary?” Talia says. She lowers the bullet and then looks him full in the face, and he does remember that from the times she visited before, that intensity. It’s not intentionally aggressive; it gets its forcefulness across out of sheer interest instead of arrogance, and is a hell of a lot more effective for it. “The, ah, how shall we put them…recent disruptions?”

“You worried that you might be applying for something that’s gonna fall through?” John says.

Talia pauses and it’s clearly to choose her words. “It’s my family,” she finally says. “I’m not going to move them somewhere I don’t think I can protect them, no matter how good it looks.”

“Protection is a funny priority to have, isn’t it?” John says. “Sorry, just it’s—”

“We kill other people for a living?” Talia says, her brows rising. “Well, once you take out the morality, is there any rational reason why I wouldn’t want to take care of them? I love them. I think they should be as safe and happy as they can be, and anyone who disagrees with that can take it up with me, not them.”

John can’t really say anything to that…and also, that reminds him he’s supposed to be figuring out what asshole should be taking it up with _him_ rather than his staff. He nods at Talia, trying to decide what excuse he’s going to come up with to step out, and then she suddenly frowns and pulls out her phone.

“I’m so sorry, I need to take this,” she says, getting out of her seat. She glances to her left, towards the private gallery they’ve been allotted, and then waves at the door as she moves in the opposite direction. “Please don’t feel as if you need to wait on me, you’ve done quite a lot of that already.”

“Sure,” John says, and then he jerks forward to catch her chair, which had gotten hooked on her skirt and was starting to follow her.

Talia moves her shoulders in an embarrassed way, already answering her call, and smiles a thank-you at him. She keeps moving and John lets her, because he’s just noticed that she has a bunch of fresh cuts criss-crossing the backs of her legs, like she got slivered from walking through something.

When she’s gone, he texts Lydia to ask whether she knows where Talia ended up staying last night. Then he goes to look for the range owner, because the guy also doubles as a go-between with some of the less regulated elements of the industry and usually has good info on things like some jackass thinking they can target Continental staff, and John assumes that’s why Lydia shifted his and Talia’s meeting to here.

John doesn’t find him. Or, for that matter, any of the other staff. They booked the place just for them, for the privacy, but there still should be more than one person around…and John isn’t an idiot, he can pick up a pattern when it’s dancing in front of him. He takes out his gun and backs up between a couple file cabinets so he’s in the most shielded part of the room, and then calls Lydia. “Something going on?”

 _“I told you, somebody’s trying to open accounts on us,”_ Lydia hisses. She’s typing loudly enough for him to hear it, which means she’s pretty pissed off.

“Yeah, I know, and I was going to start asking around about it but nobody’s here,” John says. 

Right then, something catches his eye on the desk—a little bit of yellow sticking out from under the owner’s computer screen. It’s a Post-It, with a password written on it, so John crouches down behind the desk (way too flimsy, he likes the lines of Scandi design too but in terms of materials it’s woefully insufficient) and logs in to see if he can pull up any of the security cameras from here.

Lydia had been silent through that, he assumes because she’s thinking, but when she comes back on, the amount of seething frustration in her voice tells him that wasn’t it. _“Are you telling me you lost Talia?”_

“I thought that was the point!” John hisses back. “Look, she’s not half-bad but I don’t have time for this schmoozing bullshit if I’m gonna—”

_“Look into the fact that the GMs decided to increase GM personal security because of credible threats received, which are two security points you didn’t immediately relay to me, your head of security?”_

John has to put his phone down the desk for a second. Both because he’s shit at typing with his left hand and because Lydia’s going to burn off his fingertips if he doesn’t. “Yeah, okay, sorry, I forgot to send over the breakdown I promised. But still, if you know all that now, you know I’m right that entertaining Winston’s stupid networking ideas isn’t high on the—”

 _“You know my opinion of New York, but at the end of the day, they’re New York, and if they think they should send you an extra bodyguard, John?”_ Lydia says. _“Don’t you think that says something? Also, Parrish is on his way.”_

“Parr—” John starts, and then he realizes Lydia’s hung up on him.

That makes no sense whatsoever. Parrish handles clean-up. He’s just as good as anybody else on staff with offensive, but that’s not his department, and Lydia wouldn’t send him if she thought John was in immediate danger. She’d send him if…it was already done.

Just then, a window pops up and shows John all of the current video feeds around the building. Two of the subwindows have motionless bodies in them, while a third is showing somebody’s legs being slowly pulled out of the frame. And then his phone rings again.

It’s Talia. He lets it ring twice, then makes a face and answers it. “Listen, if you’ve got work to do, we can reschedule,” he says.

Talia snorts, and then she appears in the subwindow with one of the motionless bodies. She’s looking right at the camera so it seems as if she’s looking straight out of the computer at him. _“As much as I would’ve loved to have more of a get-to-know-you period, John, I think you have a more immediate—”_

“Who the hell is with you?” John snaps, watching the feet in the other window disappear.

She freezes. _“Where?”_ she snaps.

“Coming to it, it’s the hallway to the back building,” John says, already in the hall.

When he gets there, Talia’s already kneeling down and examining a drag mark on the floor. Her hair’s been pulled out of its bun and most of it is drifting over one shoulder, that silver streak drawing John’s eye straight to a light bruise on the edge of her jaw. “Nothing useful,” she mutters, looking up at him. 

She starts to say something else, but then jerks as if shocked. John slides around her, expecting to see somebody behind them, but—nobody’s there. And Talia’s just run off in the other direction, cursing under her breath about seeing it coming.

Five minutes later, he catches up with her in another empty hallway, which has her furious. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she snaps, stabbing the heel of her stiletto down. “Really? Really? We’ve the whole place booked, we have plenty of time to clean, you couldn’t give me _ten damn minutes_ to check for clues? Or—oh. Oh, _no_ , you territorial son of a bitch—”

John blinks. He’s…pretty sure she’s not talking to him, but it’s just kind of. Interesting. Watching her get upset all over that carefully crafted composure she’d been trying to establish with him. And then he glances up, sees a camera on the ceiling, and realizes what’s got her so worked up: this was where she’d been standing with that other body. “Should we check the third one?”

Talia twists around, a little breathless from her rant, and looks up at him through disheveled hair. Her upper lip’s still curled in disgust and her eyes are so wide that John can see the capillaries throbbing across their whites without squinting. Also her blouse isn’t just rucked around, it’s torn in the front, and he can see a little lacy bra and fuck. He gets his eyes the hell back up.

“Well, we should, but I can guarantee it’s gone too,” she says curtly. She starts off a few steps, then stops and apparently remembers she’s trying to charm him. 

He can see the wince coming in her face. But it doesn’t quite make it out in public, cut off by a flash of something closer to desperation than disappointment, which is on her face just long enough for him to register it. Then Talia takes a deep breath, smoothing the hair off her face with one hand. She takes another one while she twists that thick tail into a makeshift knot, and then she looks back up at John.

“Do you know what’s going on?” she asks. She’s a proud woman, he’s seen enough of her to know just how proud, but she doesn’t show a hint of resentment when she asks. “It was such a rush I didn’t get very much, only that they really thought someone might target Continental managers.”

“So…you think this all was for me?” John says, gesturing around them.

A flicker of disbelief, or maybe frustration goes across Talia’s face. “Well, they certainly weren’t here to kill _me_. Nobody on the West Coast gives a damn about the Hales anymore.”

John opens his mouth, then stops as his phone buzzes. “My cleaning crew’s ETA five minutes,” he says. “We should check but I have a feeling we’re good now, so you want to go back to that office and—hey, are you all right? Your jaw’s—”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Talia snorts, absently fingering it. Just then she notices her blouse and she hurriedly tucks the ripped edges to hide her bra. “I’ll have to return these shoes, they certainly haven’t lived up to their billing about being balanced, but no, I don’t need anything. And I think that’s a good idea. Let’s go back and see if we can find anything. The whole _place_ can’t be cleaned out.”

* * *

John likes to think he’s a pretty good parent, and some people just tried to kill him and he’s obviously going to have to be out of the office to deal with that, so he gives Stiles a call.

Well, he tries to give Stiles a call, but he just gets his son’s voicemail. Then Parrish mentions that Stiles had gone on a body-disposal run so John calls Lydia, who informs him that Stiles is busy keeping their guests from murdering each other and her recommendation is to keep him on that so he doesn’t notice the extra security on him and object to it. John hates to admit it, but she’s right on that one; his son’s really too much of a believer in his multi-tasking ability sometimes. He tells her to just keep Stiles in food and not too much coffee, and then gets back to his own business.

“I don’t really know a hell of a lot more, New York and Rome just sprung all of this on us,” John ends up telling Talia, once they’ve riffled the offices and come up with zip on why the guy would want to sell out John to fringe freelancers. “And my head of security was just saying today she’d heard rumors of black-market accounts being put on my staff, but I haven’t had any time to look into it.”

Talia gives him an odd look, almost as if she wants to disagree with him (he’s not sure what there is to disagree _with_ , those are the facts, not opinions), but before she can say anything, Parrish ducks his head in to let them know the place is scrubbed. 

John thanks him and then starts walking Talia out. “What about you, what did they tell you?” he asks her.

“Nothing more than a list of minimum requirements for the application, officially,” Talia says. They pass some boxes of ammunition piled up in the hall and she puts her hand out to stop them, then bends over one box. “But at least on the East Coast, you can get a little out of the gossip and draw some obvious conclusions. The Tarasovs are in retreat and the D’Antonios are completely headless, so everyone’s completely distracted with trying to secure New York before we have another war on our—yes?”

She glances up from the hand John’s just put on her arm. “I thought you didn’t think much of the quality here,” John says.

“No,” Talia says, starting to smile. She straightens up and turns away from the ammunition. “I’m sorry, I really should have asked—you have a recommendation?”

“I have an idea,” John says. He waves for her to go out ahead of him. “You mind if I drive?”

“Not at all,” Talia says. Then she notices that her blouse has come untucked and sighs as she bundles her coat up against her front. “If you’ve a suggestion for a wardrobe change too, I think that would be timely. Not to cast _unnecessary_ shade on the those who do rely on it, but this isn’t my preferred tactic.” 

John can’t help a snort, she sounds so much like Claudia verbally backhanding an East Coast purist. They head out to the parking lot and get in his car, and he starts off towards one of his caches.

“Organic farm. They grow hemp and do a line in clothing, so they should have something, even if it’s not as sharp as you’re probably used to,” he tells her.

“Farm?” Talia says.

“Well, if this is some goddamn insurrection because the freelancers think we’re all part of the same elitist cabal and gotta come down at once, I think I’m just gonna skip over the small arms,” John says, shrugging. Once they’ve gotten out of city traffic, he pulls his phone out and clips it to one of the air vents so that he can see incoming messages. Lydia said she’d get him out of all the on-site meetings he’d need for the next week, but even she can’t disconnect him from everything on this short notice. Especially if Stiles is tied up with something. “I normally try to cut people slack, but bullshit like this needs to be cut short at the beginning. They have a problem with the High Table, they should take it up with the goddamn High Table, not me or my staff.”

Talia looks interested rather than taken aback. “Oh, no, I’m not disagreeing, but organic farming, so they don’t have any reason to have fertilizer around, do they? Isn’t that a little inconvenient for explosives?”

“Not when they can extract whatever they need from the compost shed. They say organic, they mean it. No cutting corners.” John glances over when she laughs, then turns back as his phone pings: Lydia wants to know if he’s got his GPS tracking on. He frowns and unclips the phone and unlocks it to check, since she should be able to tell that from her end without him. “So what’s the gossip on the East Coast say about the fringes? They just trying to push in, or they taking over?”

“Well, honestly, the East Coast’s the East Coast. I could tell you the Bowery King’s been seen above Fourteenth, but who cares out here? Personally, my read on it is that it’s just general confusion. A whole slew of old guard was knocked out at the same time and people are reading it as systematic weakness instead of just—” Talia pulls her phone out, then abruptly flings it and herself at John.

They’re off the damn highway, but it’s still a fairly busy road. He thinks he does pretty well to slingshot the car into the next right turn that comes up, considering he almost took her finger in his eye. The car’s momentum slams him up against the door and he curses, jerks his head around to try and get clear of her hands, shoves his arm down to get space between them and get his seatbelt unlocked so that he can maneuver—Talia’s not even going for him. She’s doing something to the side-window. Getting it down, just before the swerve of the car pries her off that and into the car horn.

It blares, John winces and then again as the retracting seatbelt catches his ribs, and then he grabs Talia’s shoulder. She shouts something he can’t make out into his face, just before her foot rams down onto his own, forcing it onto the accelerator so that the car leaps forward over the curb and into a thankfully empty parking lot.

Just feet behind them, an SUV plows through the space where they’d been. John had noticed it behind them but hadn’t paid much attention since it was silver (you just don’t drive anything but black if you’re in the industry, period). But it’s spinning around, clearly going to have another run at them, and Talia’s squirmed up into John’s lap so she can hang out the window with a .44 Magnum handgun and shoot at it and—

Another SUV smashes into the side of the first one. It’s black, and while most of John’s field of vision is taken up by Talia’s shoulder, he does make out Chris behind the wheel.

“What—” John says.

“Oh, I _knew_ it,” Talia says irritably, and then she opens fire.

It takes roughly fifteen seconds for John to brace himself against all of the noise, free his arms enough to wrap around Talia, and haul both of them out of the car. By then she’s checking her gun for jams and is clearly done, not resisting at all. John looks over at the other cars and notes all the blood splashed over the one windshield, then—Chris is staring at them. The man’s standing right next to the T-boned wrecks, absently holstering his gun, and for a second John doesn’t know whether to be relieved or embarrassed. Or whether he should be annoyed with himself that either of those are his first reactions.

“You know, a courtesy call would have been polite,” Talia says. “It’s also required under our _agreement_.”

She’s talking to Chris, who raises his hand. Then stops and turns back to the wrecked cars. He listens for a second before taking out a switchblade that’s at least six inches long and going over to the one that’d tried to hit John’s car. 

“I did call,” he says. He gingerly pushes aside a door that’s halfway ripped off, then climbs into the car and stabs something that gurgles. Then he gets back out, blood splashed on one arm, with a cellphone and something that glints gold under the blood in his free hand. “Left a message with Cora.”

Talia makes a strangled noise—the same noise John makes whenever Stiles explains why he’s taking interior decorating clues from Skynet. Then she stalks furiously up to Chris and yanks the phone from his hand. “Cora? _Cora_? Chris, I _like_ you. When we heard about Gerard’s death, I told Peter he was _not_ allowed to ship you a _graduation gift basket_ , and I _made it stick_. Do you even understand what that takes with him?”

Chris actually looks kind of impressed. He can’t even say anything for a couple seconds, just moves his mouth as Talia takes out a small plastic thing and connects it to the phone and gets on with hacking it. He finally clears his throat, and when she looks up, he silently holds out the bloody coins he’d gotten from the car.

She looks at him a lot like Lydia looks at Stiles, John can’t help but notice. Speaking of, Lydia calls right then and John answers it, because honestly, he doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do here. “Somebody just tried to kill me. Twice.”

 _“Yes, I know that, I told you they were after staff and the GM. Is. Staff.”_ The way Lydia is breathing right then, John almost hangs up on her to send out a general staff alert to get her a damn fire extinguisher for the blazing breath. _“Listen very carefully. I sent Braeden to the farm to stock up. She’ll bring it all back to the hotel, you don’t have to. Just get out of the street to somewhere to lie low till I figure out which neighborhoods are buying into this and which aren’t.”_

She hangs up. John looks at the phone. Thinks about it, and then decides he’d be more productive being pissed off at whoever’s after him than trying to figure Lydia out.

“We should leave,” Talia says, coming over with Chris. She still looks irritated, and his body language says he’s wary of her, but they’re also pretty clearly covering each other’s sightlines. “Do you think they had the car tracked or is it that they know where your cache is?”

“It’s a tracker in the undercarriage, I should’ve gotten it off before you left,” Chris pipes up. He mostly ignores Talia’s glower but can’t quite meet John’s eyes. “Sorry about that, your team came in before I got to it.”

John…needs this to start making sense. Immediately. And fuck the rules about not getting into guests’ business, Chris isn’t even a member and Talia’s transitioning out and they are both voluntarily diving into this shitshow. If they’re going to make John’s business their business, then he’s going to find out what their business actually is. “I’m gonna get a new car and a team to clean this up,” he snaps. “We can’t go to the farm, I need to stay in the city now, and then you two are going to tell me when the hell you started killing people for me.”

Talia and Chris are quiet. It’s suspicious, but John makes himself get the texts he needs to go out, out. Then he looks up.

“I was staying at the hotel,” Chris mutters, half to Talia, though his eyes stay on John. He sounds like he’s asking for a favor, and like he’s gutting himself to do it.

She sighs and John catches a tiny movement of her elbow, as if she’d been about to prod Chris. “We can go where I’m staying for now,” she says. “It’ll be a tight fit, but I can—let me make a call.”

“Thanks,” John says. Comes out a little tight, but he does mean it. He might not know what the hell is going on, but he knows when somebody saved his life. Even if he’s still got to reserve judgment on whether that ends up being part of the problem.

Talia pauses, her eyes flicking him over, and Chris finally raises his gaze to John’s level. The two of them both…well, John wouldn’t call it relaxing, they’re still too alert for that, but they unclench some. Then Talia nods and goes off a few feet to make her call—and also keep an eye on the cross-street—while Chris goes back to the wrecked cars. If it made any sense at all, John would call them both professional. If it made _sense_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Standard cook uniform in Western countries is clogs and houndstooth pants. I know this from reading a lot of cook memoirs.
> 
> Killing somebody with paper is a submarine call-out to Han Cho Bai in _RED 2_.
> 
> I wanted to know way more about the Bowery King in _Wick 2_. It's interesting in that you have this uptown/downtown class distinction among assassins (and very New York), but also, you have some homegrown/immigrant vibes with the Tarasovs and the D'Antonios clearly still having roots back in the Old World aristocracy, while the Bowery King is very definitely connected to the idea of the born blue-collar New Yorker (really old-school, with the pigeons and all). And anyway, the whole idea of there being an entire underclass of seething, working-class assassin types who resent the whole fancy Continental-High Table system is a huge area for ideas mining.


	10. John

Turns out Talia’s renting a house in the suburbs, which with the usual traffic plus evasive maneuvers to keep them from being followed _plus_ having to avoid all of the neighborhoods Lydia’s not sure about means they don’t get to it till pretty late into the night. So by the time John gets out of the damn car, he’s got a massive crick in his back from lying on it in the backseat for half the day, trying to run a goddamn hotel from there.

Yeah, all right, in the course of things that’s minor, but he’s got nothing else to focus on and he’s frustrated as hell about it. They’re trying to kill his _people_ out there and he still doesn’t have names.

“I don’t know who posted the bounties, but I was making some headway on the brokers holding the bonds,” Chris says as they sit down around the kitchen table. He reaches into his coat and Talia and John both look expectantly at him and he…pulls out a pen. And starts writing on a napkin.

“Wait.” Talia gets up and goes into the other room, then comes back with a notepad. Then she sits down and watches with a slightly cocked brow as Chris proceeds to regurgitate a complicated timeline and flowchart through the black-market (compared to the High-Table-sanctioned system, anyway, which doesn’t require bonds because its credit check includes an obligation to kill defaulting members). “You really are old-fashioned. Memories are fallible, you know. Even the Continentals have phones.”

Chris’ hand doesn’t slow as he glances up at her. “And when’s the last time you dropped your phone and had to remotely brick it and all your intel on it?” he says.

Talia presses her lips together and her hand makes a slight movement towards her purse, which is plopped on the table-top in front of her, and that’s when John realizes he hasn’t seen her take it out in a while. Not since…she threw it at him when trying to get the car wheel.

“Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s international money,” Chris goes on, capping his pen. Then he pushes the pad over for them to look at. “It smells off, you can tell from who’s been taking it up. The brokers will take it but none of the long-term locals will take it.”

“Well, good to see that all that buy-local bullshit we do has paid off,” John mutters. He glances over the list, finally gets some names and immediately texts them to Lydia. He’s already got something of an idea of the ultimate source of the money from which brokers Chris has been hitting up, but he’s not going to call the other GMs from Talia Hale’s rental, even if she’s been saving his life lately. “So how long have you been in town?”

Chris goes still with his hand still on the pad. Then, slowly and carefully as if he’s handling shattered glass, he withdraws his arm and raises his head and looks at John. His face is so noncommittal that it looks like something John should peel off. “About a week,” he says. “I had—”

“So you were digging through all of this in your spare time, in just a week?” John says. He half-hears Talia pushing her chair back and excusing herself to take a call, and pulls the pad over so that it’s fully in front of them. Tips it up for another look, then flips it around to show Chris. “What else were you in town for?”

“I…” Chris is going to lie, John can see the shift in the man’s eyes, and then Chris suddenly drops his gaze “…just this, that was all. I’m still on the radar of some of these people because of the whole war with my father and I got one of the first postings, and I…figured I should come down and see.”

That isn’t a lie. That is true, and it’s telling, John thinks, that Chris can’t meet his eyes over that. 

“Okay,” John says under his breath. It’s not, but he needs a second and nobody ever said he was good with his words. He shifts back in his seat, glances into the living room where Talia apparently really had to take a call: she’s stalking around the coffee table making irritated gestures that are pulling her blouse open ag—Jesus Christ, the hell is with him lately?

He looks back at Chris, who straightens up sharply, then attempts to look as if he’s being casual about it. For a moment it looks as if Chris might speak first, but then the man just swallows it.

“I really appreciate that your first choice wasn’t to take the money,” John says, and Chris jerks, his eyes widening, and John has to put his hand up to keep the man from interrupting. “Just let me—I’m guessing your body count’s a lot higher than what I’ve seen, and I appreciate that. I appreciate you helping out. But I wish you’d said you were here for that up front.”

Chris rolls his lips under each other, then opens them a little, but never quite gets out what he wants to say. He’s looking hard at John, searching for something, and whatever he finds puts him slightly back in his chair, all the tension slowly sinking out of him. He looks tired, looks like a man who’s been doing nothing but killing people all week.

“I just would’ve—I would’ve liked that,” John adds after a moment. “This sneaking around doing things for—I know it helped and I’m not wishing it hadn’t helped, but all of this bullshit is messy enough without you running around under my nose and I sent back the damn coin, too.”

“Yeah,” Chris finally says. It’s barely above a grunt. “I know, I got it.”

“It’s just—I need to know when somebody’s trying to work for me,” John says. His voice has gotten pretty low, too. He needs to get this all out, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Because, he thinks bitterly, he really does like the man. Did like him. “You could’ve just come in and said, you didn’t need to make it…anyway. Just so you know.”

Chris nods curtly. He’s not looking at John again. “Noted.”

“Thank you,” John says. He stares at the other man till Chris reluctantly looks up, then pushes back from the table and takes the pad. “All right, I’m going to get my people started on this and then we might as well eat something. You want anything in particular?”

Now Chris looks up. His eyes are a little wider than they should be, almost making him look upset, but then he shakes his head. Takes a breath, shakes it again, and gets up too. “Not really, whatever you want’s fine. I’ll hit the shower if you need to talk to Talia.”

Her call is winding up, from the sound of things, and John has a feeling Chris could use a little time to himself. Still, he’s pretty sure neither of them are going to withdraw, so he has to ask. “So you two, you’re fine?”

Weirdly, the new subject almost seems to relieve Chris; his shoulders loosen up into a shrug and his face drops into a resigned expression that’s the most human thing it’s worn in the past ten minutes. “We’ve got an agreement,” he says. Shrugs again. “It was kind of a time-share deal, we wouldn’t be where they were, but I never wanted to go after her and I don’t think she wants to go after me either. She didn’t even try to nail me with the shrapnel, back there.”

“Okay,” John says after a moment. “Because I know this isn’t the hotel, but I’m not getting into anybody else’s battle.”

Chris nods, appearing to take John seriously, and then he goes towards the back of the house while John goes to find Talia.

* * *

She’s no longer in the living room, but he can hear her voice moving through the house and follows it into the garage, where she’s scolding someone for wearing the wrong coat. “Honestly, you’re as bad as Derek, this isn’t the one rated for large-bore,” she tsks, tugging at the sleeve of an eye-rolling man. “You know more snipers work out here.”

“Talia, if I have a problem with a sniper, it’ll be because your _son_ doesn’t check his voicemail, not because of my wardrobe,” the man mutters. Then he looks up at John and hooks his chin slightly in John’s direction, signaling Talia to turn around. As she does, he helpfully slides the strap of a large duffel bag onto her shoulder. “Well, I’m off. Do let me know if you decide to let Chris steal any more of our thunder, would you?”

Half-turned towards John, Talia executes a lightning-fast pivot and grabs the man by the hair of the back of his head. She pulls him back, both of them with excruciatingly friendly smiles on their faces, and leans up to kiss his cheek. “And you be careful, brother mine. I’d hate to have to confess to an Argent that I need manpower because my _family_ managed to tie themselves up waiting for _baked goods_.”

“It had a justification: it _worked_.” Peter Hale doesn’t roll his eyes again, but as Talia turns back to John, he raises his hands behind her back and makes the universal flapping-mouth gesture with his fingers. Then, as she stiffens, he hastily shuffles away, around John’s car and then out a side-door.

Talia’s eyes half-close in frustration, then slowly re-open. “Do you have siblings?” she asks.

John blinks. “No.”

“Oh.” For a second Talia seems to be thrown. Then she gives herself a brisk shake—she’s finally changed her blouse, John can’t help noting—and walks over to John. “Well, let’s just say that I love my little brother to bits, but also, I often want to bury him alive with only self-actualization tapes on repeat for company. Anyway, he brought over some spare weapons since I have a feeling you’d like to go on a sightseeing tour of the city’s underground?”

So John doesn’t have any siblings, and neither did his wife (which is sometimes why John thinks he puts up with Stiles’ hiring decisions). He still thinks that’s a pretty specific threat for immediate family, but…priorities. “Yeah, if we deal with the brokers that will stop things for long enough that I can get on the horn and deal with the bigger picture. But look, you’re just here as a candidate and I want you to know, I’m not asking—and I wouldn’t hold it against you if you said no—for you to just jump into this. You haven’t actually signed up for anything yet, whatever the hell Winston told you.”

Talia shifts her weight back and looks up at him. She’s got enough presence that he doesn’t usually feel the difference in their height, and come to think of it, he doesn’t now either. She’s studying him without ceding an inch of confidence.

“For the record, while I did do some preliminary threat assessments for the application, I didn’t see any of _this_ coming till we had dinner and I realized you were an active target,” she finally says. Her mouth twists a little, amused but not in an entirely lighthearted way. “And that Chris was around.”

“Yeah, about him—” John starts.

“I do like him, as I said. True, we’ve never really had a chance to sit down and _talk_ , at least about anything besides what his father was up to, but he’s good at what he does, and…good generally. As we go, anyway.” She tilts her head and her eyes briefly drift to the side, then snap back to John. “He keeps the deals he makes. So while I would have _appreciated_ it if he’d been a little less selfish, since it must’ve been obvious why I was with you—”

John’s beginning to get a sense of when Talia might start to run on a bit, and he does kind of want to get to killing the assholes who are after him. “So you don’t have to stay, or deal with him.”

“Well, no, but I want to,” Talia says, as if he hadn’t interrupted at all. Then she pauses, looking a little uncertain, and it’s actually that break in her smoothness that makes her convincing, telling John she’s feeling the emotion behind her words that strongly. “It’s a job interview, but also I do honestly think—if you have issues with the system, and I think we all have a few, trying to take down the Continentals is the wrong way to go about it. We can’t all just live in bunkers all the time—”

In spite of himself, John can’t help feeling a little satisfaction at hearing that. Sure, everybody knows that, but if they had no problem living it, John and all the other GMs wouldn’t have to have their own hit squads on payroll. It’s rare that he hears a guest actually mention anything about appreciating it, and with how hard his people work, he thinks that’s bullshit. So it’s nice, getting that from Talia, even if she has some self-interest working at it.

“—and well, I think I like you,” Talia throws in. 

She’s abrupt about it, and for a few seconds afterward, they end up staring at each other because John’s not sure if she’s done or not. She certainly…she’s not flinching or blushing or anything like that. She _is_ really staring, and that’s…kind of unnerving, actually.

Talia seems to realize that, because she suddenly blinks and then drops her gaze to John’s chin. “You’d expect the manager of a Continental to take things in stride, but you’re actually—actually _human_ about it,” she says, a little more quietly. “I’ll admit, sometimes I’m not entirely sure that Winston has a flesh heart under there.”

“Oh, I think he does, he’s just had a lot more practice,” John mutters. Though to be honest, he was well into his first decade managing a Continental before he saw enough to finally convince him.

“What about London?” Talia says, her brows rising.

John…can’t answer that honestly, and he can tell she knows that, and his face is twitching towards a grimace when she grins at him. “I took oaths I have to uphold,” he says. “And you’re not on staff _yet_.”

Talia makes an amused noise that’s a little too dignified to be a giggle. “All right, well, till I _am_ …would you like to informally let me in on the game plan, and see what I can put at your disposal?”

And John realizes at that point that he’s going to hire her. He doesn’t have to, whatever the other GMs say; if he really, really wants to, he can stand his ground on that one and they’ll respect that. Yeah, they’ll also send him more candidates till he finally caves on one, but he still can make up his own mind and—and he likes her too. And at the end of the day, in their world, when you’re taking about a team that is very likely going to be together till death, that’s really the key difference. You need people you can trust and rely on, and also, you need people you like. Because Jesus, but dealing with constant homicides is enough of a pain without HR issues.

“Yeah, let’s go talk about it,” he says, and gets the door for her.

* * *

John and Talia barely get inside when Lydia calls John with an update on who they should be targeting. She’s got enough fingers in the black market economy (all of it, the official High Table one and the unofficial one and John is not his son and is not going to figure out how many levels of black are in there and it’s all just the damn black market, all right?) to put pressure on the major rogue brokers. She’s got it down to just one who’s still holding out a bounty, and who has enough of a powerbase to consider that a good idea.

“Okay, and I think I’ve got enough to give the East Asia GMs a couple calls,” John says, scribbling the broker’s address on a scrap of paper. He hands it over to Talia, who sits down at the kitchen table with a laptop and proceeds to do something that looks an awful lot like Lydia GPS-pinpointing something for a massive tactical strike.

 _“So you have something besides an educated guess? Documentation?”_ Lydia says, in one of those sweet tones that means she’s going to schedule you for back-to-back party-planning for former black-ops operatives.

John starts to take a chair out for himself, then remembers he was going to order food. He pushes the chair back into the table and walks around it towards the fridge, only for Talia to wave him away from that and towards something on the counter—take-out menus. “Lydia, if I had anything like that, I would’ve sent it to you and let you run with it,” he says. “I don’t, and we don’t have time to get it, and that’s why I’m going to give them a call. I’ll tell them what I think, they’ll look into it and even if I’m wrong, they’ll take care of it. That’s what GMs do.”

Lydia inhales to go off on him about not following protocol or keeping her out of the loop or any one of the many, many things he fucks up about managing people. And then she…doesn’t. She’s just quiet.

It’s worrying, and he’d say something if he had the slightest reassurance that it wouldn’t get her more upset, and—look, he doesn’t like making her job harder, or stressing her out. She’s good at what she does and doesn’t deserve the crap John hands over to her. But he isn’t sure so he just stands around and hopes she’s not so angry she’s actually just walked off from her desk without hanging up, and…right, he needs to order dinner. He shuffles through the menus and finds one that looks all right, then turns around.

Talia’s IMing somebody and they’re arguing about what to wear when you’re using C4, in terms of footwear. John’s pretty sure it’s Peter even before Talia mutters something about self-actualization tapes and twists so that she can see the menu. She frowns at it, then pokes at item twenty-three and mouths a ‘thank-you’ to John. And then turns around and starts up another IM where she orders somebody to check whether they remembered their spare carjacking kit.

 _“I know you take care of things—the things we can’t always,”_ Lydia suddenly says, almost making John trip as he crosses the kitchen threshold. _“There just are too many of those, in my opinion.”_

John pauses, then hides his smile because he knows Lydia has some way to sense that kind of thing, some sensor or hidden camera or pirated covert-government-agency tech Stiles hasn’t gotten to yet, and she never seems to understand he smiles at her because he’s proud of her, not because he doubts her. “Yeah, well, when you hit the ten-year mark, you’ll be eligible alternate duty to my damned GM calls. If Stiles will let you, since he’ll be up for that three years before—”

 _“Oh, as if I’d let him,”_ she scoffs, before hanging up on him.

She’ll be all right, John thinks. Then, since he’s in that mood, he sends a quick text to Stiles. Nothing about the situation, just checking in on his kid—he doesn’t get an immediate reply, hopefully because Stiles is actually sleeping for once. And then, that settled, he goes to ask Chris what he wants for dinner.

Chris…isn’t in the house. John does a full round, then about-faces back to the kitchen to find Talia. “Did Chris leave?”

Talia’s in the middle of a phone call where she’s telling somebody why she needs them to go back to Oakland and she doesn’t care if Derek took the car. She puts her cell against her shoulder and looks up. “Chris?”

John starts to repeat himself and then Talia taps at her computer. She glances over the results, then gets up and leaves the kitchen and goes into the backyard. Crosses it to the next house and walks through it, John right behind her, till she gets to the garage, which is empty.

“He left,” she says in an annoyed tone, and then she looks at John. “Why would he leave?”

“I don’t know, he said he was going to take a shower,” John says. “That’s the last I saw him.”

Talia starts to ask something, then stops. She frowns in thought for a few seconds before looking back at John. “What did you talk about before that? No, wait—why is Chris here, anyway? Did you two know each other? I didn’t think he kept up his contacts here, or really had them anyway, his family’s always been more survivalist…”

“No, not really—the last time before this, he popped in without a booking and I gave him a room, and he…I think he’s trying to pay me back for that?” John says. Then he shakes his head. “Which just doesn’t make sense. It was one room for one night.”

“When was this?” Talia says. John gives her the approximate week and her eyes widen in comprehension. “Ah. Back when that account his father opened on him was still live.”

“He did that?” John says, suddenly wishing he’d paid more attention to all of that.

Talia looks him over and John feels oddly defensive, as if she’s picking up on something he should not let her see, except he doesn’t really know what that might be. So he thinks Gerard Argent was a disgusting piece of work, and absolutely would have given Chris a room if he’d known at the time. None of that seems like a problem to him. It’s not like it conflicts with the Continental code. It doesn’t even toe the line, like some of the stunts Winston pulls.

“So he thinks he owes you a blood debt and you disagree?” Talia says. “Did you tell him that?”

“I…well, yeah, earlier and he seemed fine with it then, that wasn’t what we were—I was just telling him I would’ve liked it if he’d said he’d come back to help with this, not because he—I thought he—that’s not what I thought he was here for, at first,” John says.

Talia tilts her head. “Either you’re sleeping together or you’re hiding his daughter for him,” she says. She looks amused at John’s sudden coughing fit. “I was pretty sure Allison’s somewhere in Quebec right now. John, I’ll admit I don’t have all the facts here, but just based on what I know about Chris, I think you have the wrong idea. He wouldn’t come down for a freebie unless it was _personal_.”

John thinks that over. “So…you’re saying you think he went off to kill the broker while you and I were talking?”

“The thing about Chris—or any of the Argents, really—is he does really terrible things when he cares for somebody,” Talia sighs. “Which, you know, I don’t disagree with as a principle, but he just really could be a little more—I don’t know, subtle about it? Anyway, did you still want to get dinner or—oh, God, at least let me get the spare rounds.”

“Fine, I’ll meet you at the car,” John snaps, already halfway out of the garage.

* * *

John lets Talia drive because he needs to get that call to the Asian GMs out of the way. That at least goes quickly: he outlines the issue and what he knows, and the Tokyo GM comes to the same conclusion John has before he’s even half-finished. She is _ticked_ off that somebody in her territory would dare violate the rules in such a blatant, crude way, and promises to ship John the pickled heads within the week. Then hangs up in the middle of him trying to tell her he doesn’t really need those.

The calls to the Shanghai and Beijing GMs go about the same, minus the pickled heads. Then the call to the Seoul GM drags on and on because he wants to compare notes about some disruptions he’s had, and while John would normally be more than happy to do that, especially when he’s asking for a favor, he…is being shot at and needs to do something about it.

Or Talia can shoot them, while pinwheeling the car around so that she can reverse straight through a chain-link fence. “Sorry!” she says once they’ve screeched to a stop. “I thought they were just going to keep on running and Laura would get them at perimeter.”

“Laura?” John says, taking out his gun. “Oh, your eldest, right?”

“Yes, she’s my girl,” Talia says. She swings out of the car and shoots somebody off the roof, then strides over to a half-open door. “She’s on her way back from Alaska and just took a longer layover, since I had a feeling we might need more shooters.”

The door opens in, so Talia picks up a stick and pokes it the rest of the way open while John covers her. Clear hallway with bloody streaks at the far end, which lead to a body around the first corner. Talia uses her foot to move the body enough to figure out where the gunshot wounds are, frowns and turns into a half-circle, then points. There’s a second body around the next corner.

“Your brother’s busy, I take it?” John says, letting her map out the ballistics.

“Well, yes. Also, he and Chris mutually annoy each other, and I just didn’t think that would have been a good look in front of you,” Talia says, stalking further into the building. She leads them into a conference room (it’s a pretty cookie-cutter office building) full of bodies, then stops over one with a slashed throat. “I think he’s running low on bullets.”

John grimaces. “How fast?”

“He tends to be careful about that kind of thing, so he probably started with the knifework early,” Talia says. She absently taps her gun against her hip. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the target tends to—”

“Basement office,” John says. “Not sure where the door is, it’s been a while. Wait, Lydia might’ve sent me the floor plan—”

“Oh, no, I’ve got that,” Talia says, breezing by him while he’s trying to pull out his phone.

By the time he catches up, she’s gone around a corner and he can hear the sounds of a hand-to-hand engagement. He loosens up his shoulders and raises his gun—then jumps back as a body comes sliding out in front of him. Not Talia’s body, she’s already moved on to shooting a second man in the face. Across from them is a wide-open door and John can see stairs beyond it.

He can also see deep scuff marks in the hallway carpet behind Talia, a bit too far to be from her recent tussle. Speaking of—John sighs and turns around and shoots the first man, then turns back. Talia’s headed down the stairs and he leaves her to that, and just keeps going around the corner.

The hallway is empty, but he can see a little alcove on one side with a vending machine tucked into it. John lifts his gun again. “Chris?”

The vending machine rattles a little, and then a pair of feet slide out from behind it. “Yeah?” comes Chris’ wary voice.

“You just catching your breath again?” John asks after a second.

Chris makes a noise that’s too muffled to convey anything except that he’s obviously not shot in the lungs. His feet are still for a second, and then they slide out some more. Then the rest of him comes out. He’s got a black eye, bloody strips of cloth wrapped tightly around his left forearm and his right calf, and a bad limp.

“Kind of, yeah,” he says, coming up to John in a lopsided zigzag that’s half that limp of his, half him trying to keep the angles in his favor. “I thought you weren’t interested.”

“I—that’s not—anyway, clearly, you’re taking my opinion into account,” John exhales irritably. Then he looks over the man again and he just…he sighs and holsters his gun, and then dodges sideways so that Chris can shoot the one coming up behind him.

And then, while the recoil’s still got Chris off-balance, he dips and pushes forward and scoops the man up over one shoulder. Steadies Chris’ knee with one hand, takes his gun back out with the other, and turns around.

“John,” Chris starts, protesting and incredulous and, if you listen carefully, a tiny bit hopeful.

“For God’s sake, I said I wanted you to tell me what you were really doing, and then I said I was ordering dinner,” John mutters, stalking back to the stairway. “I’m going to see if Talia’s done killing everybody you didn’t, and then we’re going to a doctor—”

Talia appears in the doorway, with a couple spots of blood on her hands and one smear on her jaw, but otherwise immaculate. “Oh, there’s nothing the clean-up crew can’t handle,” she says. “Never could fault the Argents on not being thorough—” she smiles up at Chris, who twitches slightly over John’s shoulder “—well, John, yours or mine?”

“Yours,” John says. “We’ll call it a field audition.”

Talia falters for a second. In fact, she almost trips and John nearly tosses his gun, getting ready to catch and steady her. She doesn’t, but she stumbles for another step before she abruptly corrects herself and comes up with a thrilled smile. “Oh, absolutely.”

“Great,” John says. “But we’ll use my doctor, all right?”

She doesn’t object and goes out first to make sure that the car is ready, which leaves John and Chris alone for about five minutes. Not that Chris seems like he’s going to take advantage of it any time soon. Sure, he’s not fighting John, but he’s also just…not really giving John any encouragement here. He just droops silently over John’s shoulder.

Till they’re almost out the door, and then: “You know this isn’t the hotel.”

Talia has the engine running and is leaning out the window to ask John what the address it, so John can’t answer Chris right then. Or once they’re in the car, because John gives Chris the backseat and sits shotgun again, making a bunch of calls: to Lydia, so she knows this one isn’t on her; to Parrish, to shut him up before he complains about not getting it; to the Seoul GM, who wants one quick follow-up.

By the time John is done with _that_ , they’re at the office of an off-site doctor John sometimes recommends to his guests. Chris goes straight in to get stitched up and a couple precautionary X-rays while Talia stays out in the waiting area to talk to John about next steps in the interview process. John walks her through the topline and answers a couple questions for her (mostly about whether benefits might include incorporating the family armory) and is in the middle of trying to set up a meeting with them and Lydia when she suddenly puts her hand on his arm.

“I appreciate this,” she says lowly, her eyes intent on him. “I don’t think you have any idea what this is going to mean to my family and me. It’s a cliché but life-changing—it really will be.”

“I…” could say something trite like it’s nothing, or she’s doing him a favor, but something in her gaze keeps John from sliding on his manager’s mask “…I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t think it couldn’t work. I just want you to know what you’re getting into, too. Interviewing goes both ways.”

Talia smiles at him. “I think that’s how I know this is the right choice,” she says. 

Then she draws a quick inhale and her smiles fades a little. Concerned, John leans in and she tips her head up and he suddenly realizes what she’s doing, just as she grins again.

“You realize he still thinks you hate him, don’t you?” she says. John starts to answer her and she—kisses him. It’s a quick press, just for the shock value (which works, he has to admit). “I _know_ , but you don’t have to ramble like me or my brother to be overdramatic.”

John…leans back a little, looking at her. Thinks carefully before he responds. “I’m starting to see that.”

And then, as she’s settling, satisfied with the point she’s just made, he kisses her. He senses more than sees her eyes flying open, their lashes tickling his face, and then she makes a startled noise. Not an offended one, or a rejecting one, and she confirms that when her hands come up and grip his upper arms to pull him _into_ it, and—okay. It wasn’t just for shock value, but it also wasn’t supposed to go on so long that when they finally break apart, John finds himself half-out of his chair with a knee on the little table between their seats for support, matching Talia gasp for gasp.

“I—I see that you see that,” Talia eventually manages.

“Yeah, well—for the record, I didn’t think you were as mad as you made out at Winston for giving you an excuse to come out,” John says. He pushes himself back into his seat, then carefully gets to his feet, as he’s still a little lightheaded. “But I get it. Make him the bad guy, then you’re not the one trampling over my pride about being nominated to be somebody’s ward.”

Talia opens her mouth, then changes her mind. “Well, obviously you’re not comfortable with that,” she says cautiously. “I want to be part of your organization, not to override it.”

“Trust me, if you wanted that, you wouldn’t be applying for this job. You’re barely going to have time to push me around as it is,” John snorts. “Listen, I’m going to get some coffee, are you and him going to be here when I get back?”

After a moment, Talia leans forward and looks past John. At the coffeemaker. Which is about ten yards away, in full view of the only door in and out of the room where Chris is being treated.

John looks back at her, because honestly. 

“I think we will be,” Talia finally says, with an air of studied casualness.

“Great. Thanks,” John says.

Of course, when he gets over to the coffeemaker, he finds out that there isn’t any milk or creamer. He actually doesn’t demand a lot, considering he lives in a luxury hotel, but there are a couple things in life where if he doesn’t have to do without, he doesn’t see why he should. So, after a glance at Talia—smiling beatifically back at him—he goes to find somebody who can tell him where he can get some. Takes five minutes, tops, to find the doctor’s assistant, and another two to dose one cup and pour enough for two more into a spare cup, and arrange it all in one of those cardboard trays.

So when he comes back and Talia isn’t in the chair, John—is interrupted mid-building pile of exasperation by the doctor, who steps out of the room. “Two weeks off, unless he doesn’t mind having that cracked shin finish cracking,” the woman says. “They usually don’t.”

“Yeah, understood,” John says, sliding by her.

He stops in the doorway. Chris was already looking up, eyes frozen in a blank stare, but it takes another couple seconds for Talia because she’s hitting pause on whatever they’re watching. Both of them stretched out on one of those cots, apparently sharing a pint of a local organic dairy’s ice cream.

“I’m making him eat it while he tries to think about a threeway relationship without making it about his father, what his father tried to do to my family, or what he thinks he owes me for all of that. Seeing as that’s not really his call to make,” Talia says, leaning back against the pillows propping her and Chris up. She’s taken her shoes off and her toes move a little as John slowly comes up to the end of the bed. 

Chris’ posture softens slightly with irritation, though his eyes are still glued on John. “You missed what Peter’s going to think.”

“I didn’t miss it, I left it out on purpose because I’m _fine_ with my little brother’s judgment. I’ve so much to judge him over, I suppose I owe him something,” Talia says. Behind the airy tone, she’s a little nervous; she lets her spoon slip too far into the pint so the handle gets dirty when John tilts the coffee tray towards her. “Thank you, John. I do love an affogato.”

John looks down at the cups. “I think you’ll have to pour out some of that.”

“Well, we do need another spoon,” Talia agrees. She sets the pint down on a side table and then swings her legs over the side of the bed. When John offers a hand, she takes it, and then stretches up to kiss the side of his mouth before she takes her cup of coffee and waltzes off.

So that leaves Chris. Who hitches his knees up as if he might actually spring off the bed when John starts to sit down where Talia had been. John starts to sigh, then stops himself and just shoves the coffee with the ice cream before he makes a mess. 

“Look, I thought you fucked me so that you could get close enough to do this bodyguarding bullshit,” John says.

Chris blinks hard. Then doesn’t…doesn’t say anything. And okay, that didn’t come out the most elegant way possible, but John was going for speed over craft before the man ran off again and he…may have gotten that the wrong way around. Fuck.

“I actually _wasn’t_ planning to fuck you,” Chris suddenly says. He blinks a few more times, then breathes in sharply. Lifts and lowers one hand, then lifts it all the way to smooth over the side of his head. “Jesus, okay, I thought if I came in friendly, that’d let me hang around, and—and maybe I wanted to look better than the last time you saw me, but I—I wasn’t—you just—you just _do_ that.”

“What?” John says.

Chris gestures vigorously but incomprehensibly at him. It’s clear the other man knows he’s not making sense to John and it’s frustrating him and then he voices that with a growl that stirs something plain hungry in John, just before he grabs a double fistful of John’s shirt and yanks John into a kiss.

A moment later, John remembers something about cracked bones and he peels himself off. Up. Chris has slid off the pillows to sprawl under him, one knee bumping his side, and he’s only not crushing the man because he’s caging in Chris’ head with his elbows. His fingers are knotted pretty deep in Chris’ hair, and that’s not that long so John…loosens up on that. Not that Chris notices, from the way he’s staring at John.

“That,” he says. “That—I just—I didn’t come to fuck you because I was fucking thinking so much about wanting that that I didn’t think you’d actually—right off the bat you’d—Jesus. I thought I’d have to _work_ for it.”

“Okay,” John says. He catches up on his breath a little. He kind of needs those brain cells, considering how things have been going lately. “Okay, so—I still would’ve liked you to say something before you started all of this. Just because I gave you a room when I own a _hotel_ —”

Chris makes a face at him. “Yeah, well, I goddamn keep forgetting about _that_ , and then it’s even worse when I remember, and—”

John kisses him again. With some forethought, making it slower. Though it’s hard when Chris’ hand slides up his bicep and Chris makes a ragged, moaning noise into his mouth. He has to force himself not to chase that. “Okay. Look. You’re not a guest, and I’m the GM, I can’t fuck employees—”

Chris opens his mouth.

“That’s different, Talia’s coming in as an independent contractor, just she’s exclusive to the hotel and—what did she say, exactly?” John says. Because yeah, they should probably talk about that too.

“That she likes you and you seem to like her, I’m all right when I’m not getting fucked up by my family, and given what the two of us are like, she thinks she needs to be the one who takes this slow and gets to know us first,” Chris rattles off, mind obviously not completely on what he’s saying. Then he presses his lips together and makes a visible effort to concentrate. “She’s—like that, but honestly, good choice for you. And it’s not going to be her damn brother, if I actually get a say.”

“That’s some past history thing I’m gonna ask about later,” John says. When Chris doesn’t correct him—or disagree with the plan, John does note—he shifts his leg, then pushes off from the other man and twists over so that they’re lying next to each other, though John’s several inches higher up the pillows. “Okay. So you could’ve told me, I do some… _thing_ , and now that that’s all clear, you want to put in an application too? There are more openings.”

Chris stops halfway through easing himself back up to John’s level. He stares. He stares long enough that John thinks he might need to curse himself out, and then Chris snorts.

“You’re an asshole,” he says.

John shrugs, then lets himself smile as he puts a hand out and helps Chris the rest of the way up. “I want you to stay,” he says. “I want you to get to know something about me besides whatever _thing_ I do.”

Chris stops looking amused, but not because he’s mad at John. The look in his eyes is the exact opposite of that, and actually almost has John reaching out again to make sure the man is all right.

“That,” Chris finally says, very quietly, his fingers curling around John’s wrist. “That one.”

“Well, better if no one dies before _that_ can be figured out, isn’t it?” Talia’s back, and perching herself on the foot of the bed.

Chris starts, looks at her, and then, after a second, he pulls down on John’s arm, shifting himself over a few inches. Then settles back as she snakes up on his other side. And John…realizes when he’s lost a fight, and gets her the ice cream, and himself and Chris the remaining coffee. He’s got other things he could be doing, anyway. Getting back to his hotel, or the assholes trying to kill him. Or…

Hell, he’s tired. He knows when he needs a break, that’s the one edge he still has over Stiles. “All right,” John says. “What are we watching?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus ends this arc. Which is two of three. So will leave chapter count complete for now, but I do have another set of chapters planned. This is ending up a bit more _Rashomon_ than I expected, I have to say.
> 
> I think I saw this on the TV Tropes page for the _Wick_ films, but all the old analog tech that shows up, while also being photogenic, is a good way to avoid the data tracking and surveillance of modern tech. Of course, Chris is even more hardcore than analog is.
> 
> Talia and Peter being bratty to each other is much more fun than being homicidal/psychologically abusive, in my opinion.
> 
> The Continental respects child-labor laws, which is why Stiles was not allowed to be an official employee from birth and why he hasn't hit the ten-year mark yet.


	11. Derek

Derek’s seen a lot. He’s a guy who kills people for other people, all right? Of course he’s seen some weird and disturbing stuff, and not only that, in a lot of cases, it’s just part of his job. And if he hasn’t seen it, Peter or his mom have, and Peter makes a point of recapping that for him and his sisters in excruciating detail, with stealth flashes of high-def images whenever possible (like when he’s brushing his teeth, or trying to drink something, or basically, whenever he has something in his mouth that, for some reason, Peter can never remember will be violently ejected into Peter’s face). So something has to be really, _really_ out there for Derek to even register it anymore.

That railgun Stiles pulls out is a nice piece and is definitely something Derek would take a good look at, but it’s not—it’s not _weird_. It’s a gun. Derek does guns. And somebody pulling out a giant field artillery piece at the Continental reception desk and using it to destroy the lobby is kind of his family’s day-to-day, for the last few months. Which is why he and Peter are in the damn Continental SF in the first place, checking in after a quick one-and-done to pay for the couple weeks of free service they’re about to provide to the Continental. After Wick, it’s just getting ridiculous out in the field, and their family is too big to just go off the market for a year or so, too small to persuade anybody with a seat at the High Table to care. So…they’re making a career switch, Derek’s mom seems to think that going into hotels is a good one, and Peter is going along with it out of sheer boredom right up till they meet Stiles.

So. Stiles. He’s good-looking, when he’s not deliberately trying to piss Derek off, and seems competent, even if more insane things happen around him in five minutes than Derek’s seen in years of living with Peter, and—okay, also, Derek’s mom told him they had to keep him alive.

“It’s not exactly a _hardship_ , nephew,” Peter says to Derek right after that first meeting, because Peter, on the other hand, was gone the moment Stiles blew him off to kill somebody thirty yards behind them (overkill firepower and not remotely impressed with Peter, that’s always been Derek’s uncle’s kryptonite, and Peter criticizes _Derek_ for his dating choices). “Raise our odds for surviving to another generation by charming someone with _that_ kind of… _forcefulness_ …”

Derek pokes the elevator button again, just in case they work differently in a Continental and it’ll actually speed up (shut up, it’s been a while since he was in one and—they’re the Continental, they’ll do more than that for you). “Fine, whatever, I said I got why, I’ll work on him,” he mutters. “Just leave me out of _your_ shit.”

Peter laughs at him, proceeds to take the shower first, even though he’s not so covered with blood that he has to put a towel down before he can sit, and then…kind of leaves Derek out of it. Not on purpose, it just turns out that those rumors about freelancers wanting to take out a Continental GM are a lot more concrete so Derek’s family gets called into it a lot quicker and Peter’s off doing stuff with Derek’s mom and Stiles’ dad so Derek gets most of the time with Stiles and gets to know him some and…he kind of likes Stiles. 

Okay, he likes Stiles. Likes him enough that when it looks like getting what they want—protection for their family from all the crazy shit flying around since Wick barnstormed Manhattan—is actually going to keep him and Peter from taking it any further with Stiles, he’s pissed off. Not really _surprised_ , because it’s the Hale luck, but he’s not happy.

And then it turns out that they can, in fact, have both, because Stiles’ dad has agreed to hire them but they’re reporting to Lydia instead of Stiles so somehow this makes it okay to fuck and it should be good after that, right?

Wrong. 

“So, so wrong,” Laura mutters, checking her tablet. She frowns at it, glances at the heavy plastic crate next to her, and then snaps a photo of a barcode pasted to the crate. “I mean, I know we’re _those _people, but you and Peter and this Stiles guy and then Mom’s hanging all over Chris Argent and turns out she’s actually all about getting him and John Stilinski in bed together and…I’m stuck in a hallway trying to remember whether this means the rockets or the launchers, because _now_ they want to yell at each other?”__

__New coworker Scott, who apparently isn’t just a parking valet who is way too concerned about slipping hazard signs, winces as he flips through a binder. “Well, if it helps at all, we don’t really need to sort that out now, these can all go down to the vault in this load and…um, they’ll probably be done in another couple minutes?”_ _

__Peter looks up from where he and Derek’s mom have been trying to maneuver a bug into the surveillance-free staff meeting room where Stiles, Stiles’ dad, and Lydia have been for the last thirty minutes. “So they _are_ fighting?”_ _

__“Seriously, Scott, they’re still on probation!” Erica, other new coworker hisses, elbowing Scott hard. Then she turns a beaming smile on Peter. “That’s not what Scott means at all, they always storm in there around this time. This is when we get the dry-cleaning bill. It’s, you know, detailed. Needs to be discussed.”_ _

__Derek’s mom eyes Erica for a moment, then shrugs and pulls a large gun-shaped thing out of her purse. Which might be her portable vault-cutting laser. “Wonderful, so if we’re already on the next month’s cycle, then this should hit that budget. Yes?”_ _

__Erica’s eyes bulge a little. Then she slaps her hand over Scott’s mouth—his eyes are even wider, and he’s trying to charge forward without any weapons in his hand—and then smiles again, with considerably more respect. “Okay, then. Yeah, fine, they’re having a little argument, but I wouldn’t worry about it that much. Stiles and his dad usually get it figured out pretty fast, so honestly, I’d just do like Argent and get on with moving in.”_ _

__“He’s not unpacking, he’s scoping out alternative entrances into that room,” Peter snorts. “Did you _honestly_ think Chris owns enough clothes for multiple pieces of luggage?”_ _

__Scott pushes around Erica’s hand and then peers down the hallway Chris took fifteen minutes ago. “He said his daughter’s coming too, we figured it was hers, and—” he shakes his head and then turns back with a determined expression and _still_ no weapons “—listen, I know you’re worried, but they’re okay. They’re just arguing and honestly, I think they needed to get it out of their system.”_ _

__“Get what out of their system? I thought we explained everything,” Peter says, both scoffing and flicking his eyes around, looking for someone to settle on in case things fail to be how he intended they should be. He’s efficient like that, Derek will give him that. “People were trying to kill them and we stopped it. I have a hard time seeing what’s left to argue about.”_ _

__“Well…the fact that Stiles’ dad didn’t tell Stiles till after all of it went down that people were after him, let alone almost killed him? And Stiles didn’t get to handle the retribution, or even the clean-up? You don’t think that’s going to cause a couple issues?” Erica says._ _

__Derek’s mom frowns. “But John specifically thought about that, and didn’t think it made sense to bother his son. I remember overhearing him discuss that with Lydia.”_ _

__“ _Duh_ ,” Erica says, with dramatic hand motions._ _

__It’s silent for a few moments. Scott opens and closes his mouth a few times, but he’s clearly too confused by everything to even settle on who he wants to question. He finally nudges Erica, who blinks hard and looks at him. Then they both look back at Derek and his family, who…Derek checks with his mom, then Peter, but neither of them look as if they understand where this is going either, even if they’re a lot better at avoiding the dumb slack faces._ _

__“ _Okay_ , then,” Erica finally says, in a kind of half-laughing voice where she’s laughing to cover up something else. “Right. This is gonna be a complete blast, I can just—”_ _

__“So they’re mad at each other?” Derek interrupts. Because look, he might not get it, but the why isn’t the point either._ _

__Erica and Scott still look like they’re speaking alien languages to each other, though Scott’s obviously trying to be more polite about it. “Um, no, I’m pretty sure Stiles and his dad are okay,” he says. “I mean, even before they went in, Stiles was already sounding like—”_ _

__Just then, the door opens and everyone rushes to look as if they hadn’t been working on breaking through it. Which is kind of a wasted effort, seeing as Stiles and his father are way too busy with a friendly headlock (the dad) and wild flailing (Stiles) to really notice. “…not keeping them,” Stiles’ dad is saying, casually ducking under the flapping hands. “Yeah, I _was_ checking inventory.”_ _

__He lets Stiles go to brush down his clothes. Stiles windmills himself to the side, then huffily straightens himself. “Yeah, sure, in the middle of your crazy enforcement adventures with Talia and Chris,” Stiles says. They both seem relaxed about the comment, not even looking at each other. “Seriously, Dad, taxidermy and pickled Victorian curios are trending, and we have all this reno work anyway, don’t you think we should update—”_ _

__“You just want an excuse to steampunk the stand,” Stiles’ dad says, looking up. He stares down at Stiles for a second, then shakes his head. “No pickled head robots, son. That’s an _order_.”_ _

__“Awww, _Dad_ ,” Stiles moans, while his father rolls his eyes, then catches Derek’s mom’s eye._ _

__“Is he…” Stiles’ dad says, raising one arm and making a circular motion. When Derek’s mom nods, Stiles’ dad rolls his eyes and suggests to her that now might be a good time to give her the codes to the ventilation system._ _

__Derek’s mom looks…really pleased, and not business pleased. And look, Derek’s the last person who’s going to tell his mother what to do (one, she knows better than him, and two, she deserves whatever she wants with all the messes she cleans up for them), but he doesn’t need to see that. So he ducks over and tries to look at barcodes with Laura till she elbows him off._ _

__By then, Stiles’ dad and their mother have disappeared, while Peter’s moved over to schmooze Stiles, and Derek grudgingly has to admit that Erica and Scott seem to have been right. And while he might not be the poster child for normal social habits, he does know about keeping good relations with coworkers, so he turns to throw them a bone and say that._ _

__Except they’re frozen stiff, eyes glued to…Lydia. Who is standing in the doorway behind Stiles, holding one of those binders she always seems to have and checking her phone. Whatever she’s seeing, she obviously doesn’t like._ _

__“Hey,” Stiles says, glancing over._ _

__“Hmm?” Lydia says._ _

__She doesn’t look up at him, but she’s busy messaging somebody on the phone, and Stiles doesn’t look surprised or offended or anything like that. He just scruffs the side of his head and checks his own phone. “Oh. Yeah. Okay. I’ll check that.”_ _

__Lydia looks up sharply, but Stiles has already turned away and he’s got Peter by the arm, and Peter, for one, doesn’t look interested in bringing Lydia to Stiles’ attention. “Then I’ll do the processing,” Lydia says._ _

__Stiles moves his left shoulder towards her without looking back. “Sure. Sounds good.”_ _

__“Your onboarding schedule is available now,” Lydia says, turning towards Derek. “Read it and obey.”_ _

__Before Derek can even open his mouth, she’s striding down the hall. Stiles has moved a few more feet in the other direction but he stops now—to look at Derek, not Peter. “Okay, you’re all set to get into the suite,” he says. “I gotta run to catering and straighten something out, but I’ll swing by in twenty to show you which button’s the panic button and which ones are the HVAC and stuff like that?”_ _

__“Whatever your schedule allows, Stiles,” Peter says warmly. “If it doesn’t, I’m sure we can fend for ourselves.”_ _

__“There’s a manual or something, I think we got that in all the other stuff Lydia sent,” Derek adds._ _

__Stiles nods, looking absentminded. “Cool, okay, and if not and I can’t get up, Scotty or Erica can fill you in. Thanks, guys!”_ _

__Then he leaves and Derek starts to get back to moving in and…Erica and Scott still have those expressions on their faces._ _

__“What?” Laura finally says, exasperated. “That actually seemed okay.”_ _

__“Oh, well, _sure_ , because you just started,” Erica says, finally shaking herself out of it. She glances down the hallway where Stiles went, grimaces, and then pulls out her phone and starts frantically texting on it. “Great, great, and I thought we were gonna finally get a break…we are so fucked. So. Fucked.”_ _

__“We’re not _fucked_. We’re just…just not so good as we thought,” Scott says, though he sounds a lot more worried than soothing. He rubs at the side of his face, then twitches and turns as if he’d temporarily forgotten Derek and the rest of them were there. Then he takes a deep breath and straightens up. “Okay. Listen. This has happened before, and we all got through it, and I think we’ll get through it again. This is a good team and we all just need to remember we’re on it.”_ _

__“You’re not making any sense whatsoever,” Peter says very calmly, in that tone that means he’s two seconds from pulling out whatever experiment he’s been working on and then just flopping back on their couch later and letting Derek’s mom scold him for the extra casualties. “Please fix that.”_ _

__“Stiles and Lydia are _fighting_ ,” Erica says. She stares back at Peter as if one, she knows exactly what Peter’s thinking, and two, she already saw that last week. Then she heaves the kind of sigh Derek’s mom usually saves for Peter’s collateral damage, puts her phone away, and fully turns to them. “Okay, look, Stiles is a friend and his dad’s the best boss I’ve ever had and Lydia’s my Witch Queen role model so listen up, bedcandy: I’m gonna lay down the rules of survival around here. Rule one, you never, ever, _ever_ admit it to the guests. I don’t care what the hell they see, you make something up and you _sell_ that bullshit to them like it’s solid gold. All right?”_ _

__Derek looks at Peter, who quirks an eyebrow to signal that they should just humor the woman. “Fine,” Derek says._ _

__Because it’s not like they haven’t been through shit before, and this is a fucking _hotel_. This can’t be any worse._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even when things are running normally, it seems like a Continental is going to see a fair number of guests show up in less than pristine condition. If I were them, I'd keep somebody on staff to research and work with stain-resistant luxury materials the same way they canonically do with bulletproof suitwear.
> 
> Yeah, so, you thought I was just going to skip over all of the underlying trust issues in the Stiles chapters because [Rule of Funny](). It's not workplace comedy without interpersonal disputes.


	12. Peter and Derek

Step one of mastering a territory is always to learn where all the exits are, who controls them, and what (or who, depending on their preferred poison) controls _them_.

Yes, yes, Peter remembers that they’re not actually orchestrating an assault, or even a hostile takeover. He even agrees with his sister that a takeover wouldn’t be worth the immediate hit to their financial and political capital. He’s only pointing out that there are many reasons why they’re well-suited to their new careers, with the very _least_ of them being that it’s really not too different.

“And this is where the tertiary back-up connects,” Lydia announces, opening up a fine-looking mid-century armoire in one of the rooms of their new suite. She explains the set-up, then steps back so that Peter and Derek can sit down and try out their new access codes. “Most of the time you can and should keep this shut. It’ll forward any alerts to your phones and I don’t recommend regularly exposing this to visitors.”

“Are we supposed to have people up here?” Derek says, his fingers slowing over the keyboard. “I thought we were security.”

Their new supervisor, Peter observes, has a wealth of nuanced displays of disappointment. Possibly even more than his own sister. “We’re not in the habit of entertaining in our personal quarters anyway,” Peter inserts before she can start on Derek. “Not anyone who’s not already passed your— _extremely_ —thorough background check. Although I have to ask, what’s the harm in us checking up on the system, if we’re the only ones here?”

Lydia’s stony expression takes on a distinct shade of contempt. “You’re free to check but you don’t have any clearance to change settings. As I said, this is a back-up station, and at any rate, we didn’t hire you to be glorified monitor watchers so if you were thinking this would be a desk job—”

“No, we didn’t, he’s just asking why can’t we do things that usually are part of the job?” Derek asks, annoyed.

Peter…honestly doesn’t want to apologize for him, or even deflect Lydia’s temper, even if that would be the wiser thing to do. The woman is clearly competent, but even more clearly, she thinks they’re rank amateurs. And she’s damn well read that portfolio Talia and Peter labored over for the better part of a month, she showed her hand there when the benefits enrollment forms came to them with the pre-existing medical conditions section already filled out, so she can’t even plead ignorance.

Thankfully, before they can do more than merely stare tension at each other, Stiles comes rambling into the room, a stack of towels under his arm. “Hey!” he says, smiling at them. “Hey, so I got out of my thing early and was only a floor up and these are the good towels, soaks up the blood without leaving a ton of lint everywhere. How’s it going?”

“Back-up system,” Derek says, twisting around. He looks a little puzzled at the towels, probably because there is an absurd amount of cabinet space built into the bathroom and a good half of it is already devoted to towel storage, but gets up with his hands out to take them from Stiles. “Looks cool.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ve been meaning to upgrade that to just integrate into the TV. I mean, the whole armoire thing in the middle of open-faced Scandi shelving, it’s kind of a giant check this out, isn’t it?” Stiles goes on, leaving the towels to Derek and pushing by him to lean over the keyboard. He taps at it a few times and then a command window pops up. “Okay, here, it’s on full access now. You’re gonna need that or else the alarms will drive you crazy.”

Peter looks at Lydia, who is…scrolling through her phone. Some ill-informed people accuse him of being overly dismissive, but that only says more about their lack of observational skills: what he is, is someone who doesn’t see the point in wasting time on frippery. So no, he didn’t engage with Erica and Scott’s ridiculous dramatics earlier, because he wanted to get his access codes. That doesn’t mean he was ignoring them completely.

But even to his suspicious eye, Lydia doesn’t seem upset. She also doesn’t seem overly intent on ignoring the situation, and in fact, looks up as Stiles is explaining to Derek the difference between silencing an alarm and turning it off. “They’re not set up to dismiss, that’ll just reroute to me,” she says.

Stiles glances back at her, then looks at the screen. He frowns, taps a key, tilts his head, and then hums thoughtfully. “Oh, right, training mode. Forgot about that. Okay, well, you should be good to go now.”

“Thanks,” Derek says, and when Stiles turns to him, he blinks and then looks down at the towels. “These are okay, too.”

“Great,” Stiles says. “So has Lydia shown you where the elevators are yet?”

Derek is being _blatantly_ accommodating, but even he can’t help looking oddly at Stiles, seeing as they’re not anywhere near the ground floor. “What, the freight ones?”

“No, the other ones. Freight’s just for stuff like room service and the regular cleaners,” Stiles says. He looks up and past Derek, mouth open to say something, and then an annoyed expression crosses his face. But only for a moment, and then he’s got a hand on Derek’s elbow and checking his phone and somehow nudging Peter’s chair to spin around, too. “Well, I have to get over to the basement for delivery inspection I don’t want to do anyway, I’ll show you.”

At that point Peter realizes Lydia has left them, even though her schedule states that they should be with her for at least another three hours (broken down into five-minute increments, which even by Talia’s micro-managing standards is…psychotic). He does think about saying something, but Stiles is happily spilling the ins and outs about biomaterial removal practices and the man is very charming when he’s being genuinely welcoming. And interesting. And anyway, Peter’s a strong believer in the use of mistakes as a teaching tool. If Lydia wants to dismiss them, very well, he’ll take that dismissal and acquaint himself with Stiles’ preferred protocols for hiding body disposal from guests.

“…so going up, it’ll stop wherever, but going down, it’ll just go straight to the basement, no middle stops,” Stiles explains as they step into the freight-elevator-looking elevator that is not a freight elevator. Then he yelps and flails past them, only to droop as the doors close in his face. “Oh, crap! Sorry, I didn’t mean—you didn’t have to come with me, you could’ve…dropped the towels off, or…”

When Derek truly, seriously cares for something or someone, he not only refuses to talk about it, he refuses to act as if he ever didn’t care about it. For someone who makes a fetish out of not giving a damn about people’s opinions, it twists him into some amusing behaviors. “They’re not heavy,” he shrugs, fluffing them under his arm. “I’ll do that when we go back up.”

“I think all of this week is dedicated to learning our way around anyway,” Peter says. Stiles twitches a little and Peter reads that as him suddenly remembering what he’d been interrupting, and mentally scolds himself for being so clumsy. He can also amuse himself with his nephew any damn time, whereas he’s got only a small window for ingratiating himself with Stiles, who might be equal to Lydia on paper but who is, after all, the GM’s only child. “We can finish unpacking later. We’re all used to living out of suitcases anyway.”

“Yeah, we got all the important stuff out already,” Derek seconds. With a sideways look at Peter—he usually doesn’t understand why he should be worried, but Peter will credit him with a decent sense of when _Peter_ is. “So we can only use this one for bodies?”

“Um, no, we use this for the really bloody laundry too. And the furniture that’s too damaged or compromised for us to recycle as found-material sculpture. And whenever we get a government op on a bad acid trip.” Stiles scrubs the side of his face in embarrassment, even as he uses his other hand to absently take out a taser, confirm that the charging end isn’t jammed, and then switch it to an up-the-sleeve holster. “Basically, anything that might not be guest-friendly.”

The elevator arrives at the basement floor and opens out into a bustling—but, eerily, quiet—hallway full of people moving crates of various shapes and sizes around. Several groups of them are suited up in full hazmat gear and Peter spots Scott through the clear face-pane of one, directing a team in loading a Porsche into what appears to be a kind of mobile lab built into a storage container.

“Why would that be a problem?” Derek’s asking Stiles. He follows the other man out of the elevator, silently snarling at a man who pops up and attempts to take the bundle of towels from him. “We all see that kind of stuff at work.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s the point. You go do your work thing, then you come to the Continental and you expect that just this one time, in this one place, you don’t have to work. You don’t have to think it, see it, smell it, whatever,” Stiles says, looking back. He’s temporarily distracted by somebody handing him a clipboard, but after a glance he signs that and is patently more interested in enlightening Derek. “Look, it’s not just the rules. I mean, the rules tell you what not to do, but you still have to get people to buy into that, and they can’t really buy into it if they’re watching the maid tote off a severed limb. _You_ wouldn’t take us seriously if you saw that, would you?”

“Hey, this was officially checked in!” yells the hazmatted figure carrying said dismembered leg. Which, admittedly, is in plastic shrink-wrap. “You authorized it three hours ago!” 

Stiles winces, then makes annoyed gestures until the shrink-wrapped leg is safely stowed and then locked into one of a bank of small fridges that Peter had at first taken for employee lockers. “This whole proof of work revival, I’m not into it. Some stuff we don’t need to bring back from the nineties, especially when you have GoPro and livestreaming,” Stiles mutters. “Anyway, what I’m trying to get at, it’s about—”

“Creating a complicit atmosphere,” Peter says. “Enforcement squads are expensive, after all.”

“I don’t know if ‘complicit’ is the word I’d use, but yeah, you’re in the ballpark,” Stiles says. That might be a suspicious look in his eye, but he certainly isn’t ducking behind any of the handy crates when Peter comes up to him. “Making people think they really are outside of their work is important to how a Continental stays a Continental. That’s the first thing you’re going to have to get used to, and I know it’ll probably take a while, but—”

“I don’t think it should take that long. We’re all very motivated to make this as seamless and swift a transition as possible, on both sides,” Peter says. A passing trolley of crates marked for the kitchen provides him with a reason to swivel himself right up to Stiles’ hip. “It’s not so different from hiding our world from the general population, after all.”

Stiles had been raising a brow at Peter’s maneuvers, but at that he suddenly breaks out into a laugh. Even gives Peter a light pat on the back before he steps out and waves for another trolley to come their way, and while Peter very much does like the way the man looks when he relaxes the concierge mask, that was definitely less than impressed. Not hostile, but still.

“That’s the first thing anybody we recruit out of the guest side of things says,” he snorts. He gives Peter another careless pat on the hip to make room for the trolley, then squats down and starts snapping QR codes with his phone. “Yeah, look, I can see where you’re coming from with that but it’s _kind_ of different. See, it’s not like we pretend things don’t happen, because unlike the rest of the world, guests here know they do, and you don’t want to treat them like they’re idiots. That’s just condescending, and condescending isn’t good for business.”

“Yeah, really?” Derek says. Because his romantic side never stopped him from being a tactless numbskull.

Peter presses his lips together and glares at the other man, who, predictably, shrugs as if he has no idea why he’d deserve that. “No, I do under—” he starts.

Stiles bolts upright, a furious expression on his face. “What the _hell_?” he hisses, slamming his phone down onto the top crate. “No, really, what the hell? How many times have we done this, it’s Pantone five-five-oh-seven, not five-five-one-seven?”

From the storage container lab, there’s a sudden scuffle. Peter looks up with his hand on the nearest firearm, then stands down as Scott’s non-hazmatted head pops out of the container. Scott stares down at them in worry, then hastily climbs out of the lab as Stiles continues to rip into the blank-faced man who’d pushed up the trolley.

“We have over a decade of orders in that color! We always order that color! We order it twice a month because if it’s not people breaking the rules, it’s still people forgetting that maybe they shouldn’t clean half an Everglade swamp off their guns when we have _complimentary same-day service_!” Stiles cries. He stares at the man for a second, panting, and then he stabs his finger down onto one of the crates. “This shit is going straight back, and I expect a credit as well as—”

“We’re backordered on that color, as you’ve been told,” says the man.

Stiles makes a low, strangled noise that has Peter checking whether that taser’s coming out again. It’s not, but Stiles has retrieved his phone and Peter has seen people bludgeoned to death with frailer items. “And _you’ve_ been told that this is an unacceptable level of service,” he snaps. “It’s like you don’t _want_ the business of the biggest operator in the county, or something.”

The man’s woodenness finally bends to show a little exasperation. “Well, we’re backordered for a reason.”

Derek’s eyes widen and Peter’s forced to perform an ungraceful shuffle around the trolley to stomp on his nephew’s foot before he does something regrettable, like try to shoot the man (rudeness is unacceptable but Peter _has_ read the employee guidance on proper termination protocol). Scott also rushes over and grabs at Stiles’ arm, whispering urgently that maybe they can just look into paint or something. Stiles shakes him off, but does seem to remember that they’re in the middle of a lot of other people.

“I just don’t see why you’d even bring all of this, if you already knew we were going to reject it,” Stiles finally says, in a voice straining under its control. “It’s your gas money you’re wasting.”

“Well, we were told bring what we have,” the man says. Then he hands over a receipt. “Signed off and everything.”

Stiles takes it and reads it silently. He looks up once at the man, then goes back to the receipt. Then he folds up the receipt and hands it over to Scott without looking. The man puts his hand on the trolley and Stiles, lips tightening, jerks out his phone and holds it to the side of one crate so it beeps. The man takes his hand off the trolley and Stiles nods curtly to Scott, who goes over to the side, then returns with a small coin-case, which he gives to the man.

“Right,” Stiles finally says, watching the man go. “Okay. So _apparently_ , we’re redoing the patio lounge tiles.”

“We are?” Scott says, blinking. “I thought we closed that down for the whole week till we could get the right tiles—”

“I know, right?” Stiles says, with a casualness that borders on pure acid. “Speaking of, when’s the last time we checked how that was going? Six hours ago? That’s way too long, it’s a huge seasonal selling point. Let’s go.”

Scott’s face suddenly clears up with the kind of realization that usually sees the person running futilely away from the explosives. He yanks open the receipt, winces hard, and then the man lunges _towards_ Stiles. Who doesn’t even need Derek intercepting Scott, since he’s already halfway into the elevator.

Anyway, Derek’s not intercepting so much as providing a convenient step-ladder. Peter sighs and pries the two men apart before Scott completely somersaults over Derek, then punches the elevator to come back for them. “I take it we have a problem?” 

“Yeah, we do, Lydia signed for the new tiles,” Scott says, shoving them away from the elevator. “Come on, come on, if we go south and then take the library passage, we might get there first. Oh, and grab those, would you?”

He points to a stack of bright yellow plastic leaning against the wall. Peter picks one up and then frowns down at the “Slipping Hazard” emblem that reveals itself. “I don’t—”

“Come _on_!” Scott says, more or less bulldozing Peter, Derek, and an armful of the hazard signs onto one of those airport carts. Then he hops behind the wheel and sends them zipping off before Peter can right himself. They all must have met the minimum skill scores, Peter reminds himself, even if they don’t look or sound like it. “We gotta get there before they—”

* * *

“—reopen the lounge,” Lydia is snapping when Scott hustles Derek and Peter through the doors. “It’s visible from the street, Stiles, and _you’re_ the one who insisted that hologram tech wasn’t mature enough yet to install.”

“Yeah, I did, because holograms don’t cover sound and I don’t see what camouflage discussions have to do with the fact that you authorized subpar tiles that don’t even have embeds for the pressure sensors,” Stiles snaps back.

The two of them are at the far end of a partly-covered patio, standing at the end of a section where the floor’s been ripped up to show the underlying concrete. Lydia is closer so Peter nods for Derek to circle around on her, and Derek…would do that if somebody wasn’t glommed to his arm. He turns around and Scott shoves one of those stupid signs in his face.

“The pool exit is on that side, make sure you get it, and oh! No, flip it around, we don’t want people to come in at all,” Scott hisses, twisting the sign to show that it’s double-sided, with a ‘Closed for Cleaning’ message on the other side.

“Why the hell—” Derek starts, and Scott sighs and just dodges around him to slam down a sign, right as somebody opens the door on that side.

It’s a man and a woman, both dressed but with damp hair and carrying beach totes. The handle of some kind of sword is sticking out of one tote. They stare at Scott, who smiles in hopeful desperation up at them. Then at Peter, who’s just cleared his throat and stepped forward.

“This area is closed at the moment,” Peter says. He tilts his head back and considers the two, who Derek doesn’t recognize but who have that annoyed look that means they do know Peter, and then smiles. “By management.”

The man snorts and looks at the woman, who opens her mouth—and then a hideous crashing and screeching noise fills the air. Along with a sudden cloud of dust that kicks past both sides of Derek, and the unmistakable sound of warping metal.

Everybody whips around, something in their hand—even Scott’s got a baton and…and it’s yellow and the same yellow as the sign and is there a baton hidden in the sign?

“See?” Stiles snaps into the equally grating silence that’s now fallen over the patio. “See, that’s why you need pressure sensors.”

He and Lydia are still standing where they were, but now there’s a—a giant spider thing smashed in between them and the rest of the patio. Well, okay, not a spider thing, the bits sticking out of the settling dust are clearly steel rods, but it…it’s got way too many claws, and they’re all wrapped around what looks like a lounge chair, the remains of it anyway, and the chair’s twisted up and withered like something sucked the juices out of it and. Okay.

“ _That_ is why we haven’t installed it in the lobby yet,” Lydia says. She doesn’t stir, her arms still folded over her chest, as part of the thing abruptly snaps away from the rest, sending bolts and nuts skittering in all directions. “That is not _immobilizing capability_ , Stiles.”

Stiles points at the thing so forcefully that the momentum spins him towards it. He stops in the middle of whatever he’d been about to say to look at it. Blinks, then jerks himself back to Lydia. “Yeah, well, neither is a bank of fifty-cal rifles. If you want to talk about reducing our reno footprint after an incident—”

“Oh, are we _discussing_ things again?” Lydia lofts with an airy smile.

“Cleaning,” says somebody. The guy from the pool. He’s reading the sign. “That what you’re selling these days, Hale?”

“Ah, yes, as you can see,” Peter says. He smiles again and the guy looks up at him, then past him at the thing. Which suddenly spits out another bunch of bolts and collapses another foot. Peter can—and has, multiple times in Derek’s childhood—bullshit somebody into their own grave, but even he’s looking at a loss on this one. “We’re, ah…”

“We’re redoing the patio to be more evening-entertainment-friendly,” Scott says, popping back up. He fans out a couple more signs around him and drops them down as he moves towards the couple. “We got a lot of feedback that the lighting system caused a lot of glare, and we know it’s really important for people to see that all the sightlines are covered.”

The thing doesn’t remotely look like a lighting system. This isn’t going to work at all, they’re just going to have to—to knock out the couple or something like that, and Derek’s about to repurpose his armful of towels for smothering when the woman suddenly nods. 

“Well, yeah, that is important,” she says. She’s still not that convinced, but she’s backing up, and taking the man with her. “The city view would be a lot better, too.”

“Those are pretty old-fashioned bulbs, I’m shocked that they’re still allowed,” the man adds. “They don’t violate some ordinance on light pollution or something?”

Scott nods enthusiastically. “We’re aware, believe me, we have a transition plan and we work very closely with several urban wildlife groups to constantly improve our effect on the local ecosystem. It’s just a little tricky with the, um, the historic preservation laws too.”

“Well, I’m still on the side of the birds there, so that’s where I’d want my money to go, if I get a vote,” the man says, and then he and the woman leave.

They leave. They leave, and Scott whiffs out his breath, his shoulders sagging, before yanking out his phone and checking something on it. Then he heaves out another relieved sigh. “Okay, they’re sitting down to lunch in the café,” he mutters. “Usually means they’re not going to check out.”

“I don’t think they actually _bought_ any of that,” Peter points out, though he’s a little less sarcastic than he usually would be. He might…actually be kind of impressed with Scott, going by his eyebrows.

“Well, no, but I think the trick is you give them something else to talk about and you make them feel as if we’re really acting on _some_ feedback of theirs, even if it’s not the feedback that is actually about…um…” Scott trails off, looking over his shoulder at the thing and scratching the side of his head.

So it makes Derek feel better that even Scott doesn’t know what the hell to call it. He didn’t get into his line of work because it was easy for other people to make him feel guilty. “Are we just going to leave that here?” he asks.

“Well, would _you_ want to shut down your most popular private-party location when bookings are already down two percent?” Lydia snaps, stalking around the thing.

“Yeah, and obviously we can’t maintain a blind spot the size of a Sherman tank on our systems, can we,” Stiles adds, coming around the other side.

Derek stiffens, then starts to point out that he only just _started_ , and that was the whole idea of onboarding per _them_ , but Peter clears his throat again. He’s going to jump in, Derek thinks, but then Peter shoots a meaningful glance between Stiles and Lydia, and Derek suddenly realizes that those two aren’t speaking to Derek.

“Oh, excuse me?” Lydia says, tossing her hair in Stiles’ direction so sharply that Derek almost expects daggers to fly out of it, like some Hong-Kong wirefu flick. “Did you not just demand that ops have final say over entertaining venues?”

“I _said_ if you’re gonna mess with anything that affects _public perception_ , that’s operations,” Stiles shoots back. “Tile color? Tile color’s kind of visible. And we’re changing the tile color because you think it’s more important to—”

“Get our systems back up and running, without holes or _unauthorized_ experiments that are nowhere near ready to deploy in public, than I think it is to maintain a _security_ breach for the sake of—”

“Reassuring people that the crazy bullshit going on outside isn’t going on inside? But okay, right, I guess that’s _security_ too since nobody is telling me about this anymore! So I’ll just take my ops butt back downstairs and pretend I can cover up stuff I don’t even know I’m covering up! Because that’s corporate synergy!” Stiles shouts. He storms off towards the pool door, ignoring Scott’s attempt to stop him, and then whirls around. “Oh, and that mess? All yours, security! All yours!”

Lydia stares expressionlessly back at Stiles. He makes a vague hand gesture, then turns it into a frustrated scruff at his hair as he turns and yanks open the door. Scott almost skins his face diving for the handle and grabbing it before the door would’ve slammed into the wall.

“Well, that seemed like a highly constructive conversation,” Peter says. “Is it protocol to air our internal disputes in open-air spaces?”

Lydia continues to stare at the space where Stiles had been. She’s so motionless that Derek honestly starts to think she’s not fucking with them and genuinely hadn’t heard them. He takes a step forward, then looks at Peter, whose disgust has faded a little into confusion, as if he’s thinking the exact same thing.

“You are familiar with our standard timetable for waste disposal, are you not?” she suddenly says, still not looking at them. “You did read that part of the training materials?”

For some reason, Peter doesn’t answer her. He’s still eyeing Lydia as if he’s not sure what she’s doing, so Derek steps up. “Yeah, we did, and anyway we were doing that long before we even joined—”

“Well, then, welcome to working at the Continental,” Lydia says, turning to face them. “Your first job is _get rid of that_.”

She just. She kind of. She. Has this stare. And Derek’s seen a lot but literally, he hasn’t seen that one.

Anyway, she walks past them and out the other door, the one Stiles didn’t go through, and then it’s another couple seconds before Peter finally shakes himself, blinks a few times, and then pretends to straighten his cuffs when Derek knows he’s actually checking that he still has all his weapons. And if it takes Derek a couple more seconds, well, he can count on one hand the times he’s seen his uncle that rattled and nobody’s even died (…Derek has to stop himself from pulling out his phone and double-checking that, now that he’s thinking about it). 

“Okay, I think we’d better just…yeah, start with that,” Scott says, coming up to them. 

“But that—a dispute like that can’t possibly be good for the hotel,” Peter says, blinking again in disbelief. “We barely explained it away this time, and—”

“Yeah, no, I know, but trust me, you’re not going to get them to talk to each other before they want to, and they really, really don’t want to,” Scott sighs. He puts his hands on his hips and looks at the thing. “All you can really do is try and stick to the rules till they’re ready. So…well, I’m guessing Lydia’s done with you for now, but I’ve got some time. I’ll show you how this part works.”

Derek can’t help his own sputter at that point. “What, getting rid of this? Are you serious? Are you—are you _looking_ at it? We’re supposed to get rid of this how, closing our eyes and wishing?”

“Look, whatever department you’re in, you gotta learn this part,” Scott says in a slightly scolding tone. Which he seems to immediately feel bad about, since he follows it up with an encouraging smile. “You just have to get rid of it. Whatever it is, wherever it came from, whoever made it happen…first things first, you get rid of it. That’s the rule.”

“That’s…easy to remember, at any rate,” Peter says after a moment.

“Well, once you do a couple of these, you’ll get the hang of it,” Scott says, already more cheerful. He starts to take off his coat. “And hey, you already have towels, that’ll save us a lot of trouble.”

This is when Derek starts to think that maybe hotels are a little more complicated than he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buildings from the days when everybody had a small army of servants have "secret" hallways and staircases and all kinds of areas that are designed to let staff get around without being seen, because God forbid the delicate aristocracy see their servants more than strictly necessary. Though sometimes it wasn't entirely class-based issues: some hospitals were built with a "body chute" that is exactly what it sounds like, a chute straight to the morgue so that they could move dead bodies without the other patients seeing them and freaking out (these were usually the hospitals that specialized in infectious diseases like TB, which in pre-antibiotic times would pile up the bodies really, really fast). So the Continental is just following a grand old tradition there.
> 
> In retrospect, Charon was probably relieved to only have to look after John Wick's second dog. Imagine what he's asked to store in the vault on a regular basis. 
> 
> One problem with large glassed structures is that they can often trick birds into thinking that a building isn't solid and then they fly into the glass and break their necks. Skyscrapers and similar buildings are pretty notorious for the swath they cut through local bird populations.


	13. Peter and Derek

Obviously, Stiles and Lydia are fighting. Even more obviously, this is detrimental to the running of the Continental, which in turn is detrimental to Peter’s (and fine, his sister’s, though he still thinks he should be credited with initially suggesting they look outside of the East Coast) goal of seamlessly becoming critical to its core operations. No, he wasn’t lying when he told Stiles they weren’t interested in a _hostile_ takeover; it’s in everyone’s best interests that his talents and resources aren’t wasted in some pointless territorial battle over a few city blocks, and instead are invested in an institution with true staying power.

Which is why he _is_ disputing why he and Derek have just spent the last three hours overseeing a clean-up crew dismantling the failed security measure. After all, they were hired to provide private protection for the head of ops, who has been as conspicuously absent as their supervisor.

“Allegedly,” Derek mutters, tossing a lid onto one of the containment crates holding the scrap. “I mean, isn’t that a security breach too? Letting new employees just do whatever? Maybe they should’ve given you and Mom contracts for breach testing.”

“You know as well as I do that your mother wanted an active engagement,” Peter says, though he agrees with Derek more than he disagrees. Which is a sign in and of itself of how ridiculous this situation is. “That said, I don’t know that learning the finer points of dismembering a robot claw was a hole in my resume that I needed to fill.”

“Hey, you’d be surprised,” calls the head of the crew—Jordan, that was his name. “Robots are kind of a big deal—oh, wait, no, they probably haven’t gotten you started on that yet. That’s month two, right, Scott?”

Scott nods and then comes over to where Derek and Peter have been sitting. “Okay, I think this is far enough along, we can leave them to it,” he says, with that gratingly undentable enthusiasm of his. “We’ll go down with this next load to the recycling—”

Naturally, Peter knew better than to think they’d be released from their uselessness so easily, but it’s still annoying to have that confirmed. “Scott, while it’s been very kind of you to help out in light of Lydia’s…departure, I’d like to—”

“What the hell does any of this have to do with Stiles?” Derek snaps.

Scott flinches a little, so he clearly recognizes the resentment in front of him. But then he natters on: “Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s still going to be stuck checking vendor deliveries for another hour. And even if he gets yanked away from that, Isaac’s keeping an eye and would let me know.”

“…so basically, he’s doing what we’re supposed to be doing?” Derek says, glancing at Peter. “Then what are we doing here?”

Which is a very good question, and of course when Derek gets that part right, he has to get something else wrong—demanding answers from _Peter_ when Peter is not the person setting their work schedule is so typical of him. It’s almost as if he wants Peter to take over, except when Peter does, he’s never happy about that either. “I don’t know, nephew. But it seems wise to check in with our employer to make sure we’re on the right track, so if you’ll excuse us—”

Scott steps in front of Peter when Peter gets up from his chair, and when Derek also stands up, Scott grimaces but shifts—intelligently, Peter will admit—to block both of them. “Okay, look, I know this is all really new, and you’re just trying to do things right, and…you’re just going to go get one of them no matter what I say,” he sighs. “But just come with me and this load first, all right? Stiles is down in the basement anyway, you’d be going in the right direction.” 

That would be the preferred outcome. And yet…Peter hasn’t lived this long by simply indulging himself, no matter what the ignorant think. “It’s been quite a while since we’ve touched base with Lydia. Do you really think that’s the wisest idea?”

“Well, if she wants us, I’m pretty sure she’d come get us,” Derek mutters, shooting Peter an annoyed look.

“Yes, but seeing as it’s only our first day on the job and we’ve yet to prove ourselves, I don’t know that we want to put her through the _trouble_ ,” Peter icily replies, willing his nephew to just shut up and let him handle it (this is exactly what Peter means). “That is, even more trouble than she’s already having today.”

“That’s…really nice of you, but I think it’s okay,” Scott says, giving them a bit of a concerned look. Apparently, even his puppy-dog eagerness can’t ignore Derek’s attitude. “Lydia’s not actually in trouble and anyway, she’s the one who’s always watching the security system so she already knows we’re going down there.”

Derek makes a face. “So…we’re doing this based on which of them is not constantly spying on us?”

“No, it’s not like that. Lydia’s just doing her job and I just think that if we did it the other way around, it might look like you’re sneaking around Stiles’ back. And I know that sounds weird since you don’t even report into him, but he’s already kind of upset that people weren’t telling him things,” Scott says, looking pained. “He doesn’t always, um, think normally when he’s mad. But honestly, he’s a little less scary than Lydia when he’s mad, so…I just think it’d be better to go to him first.” 

He has a point. A good, well-reasoned one, even after Peter’s spent a second poking at it for holes. Also, nobody can say Peter was responsible for this idea if it goes wrong. “All right, have it your way.”

Relieved, Scott ushers them back to the special staff elevator and they return to the basement. It’s a good deal less crowded this time around, which Scott helpfully explains as being due to the fact that most vendor deliveries are over for the day, so they only have to walk halfway across the unloading bay before Peter spots Stiles. Who’s with Talia. And what looks like a pallet stacked with explosives.

“Shit,” Derek mutters. Then buries his face behind his stack of towels (why on earth does he still have those?) when Scott turns around and gives him a curious look.

Peter’s nephew is exaggerating, as usual. But not that much, and Peter does—casually, without unnecessarily alarming Scott or the other staff moving around the basement—speed up so that they reach the pallet before Talia’s hand lands on the latch of the topmost crate. “And what have we here? Are we contouring the landscape without me?”

“What? No, are you kidding, the landscaper’s guild would kill me,” Stiles yelps, swiveling back from the pallet. He holds his empty hands up for them all to see, then sticks them in his pockets while looking comically furtive.

Talia had been mid-suggestion, Peter can tell from the lingering twinkle in her eye, but that throws her. She’s always had a little difficulty with authority figures who don’t appear to be authoritative, despite that being her own favorite tactic. “I don’t think mortars are particularly well-suited for that sort of work, anyway,” she says. “Certain people’s ideas about excavation notwithstanding.”

Oh, for…a full decade and she’s still holding it against him. “I never claimed landscaping was the aim, and anyway, I don’t remember you objecting when that fountain turned out to fit perfectly in the resulting hole.”

“It was a nice fountain,” Talia sighs, her expression suddenly and deceptively turning dreamy. “I will miss the mermaid spouts. Hard to get that sort of adjustable range in wrought iron.”

“So, um, is this…something you didn’t bring with you?” Stiles whispers to Derek. “I don’t remember a fountain on the inventory.”

Derek grimaces. “Be glad we didn’t bring that, Peter used to use it all the time to shoot guests he didn’t like off the diving board.”

That didn’t happen nearly as often as Talia using it to half-drown her dates before she—Peter takes a deep breath, and reminds himself that the world is far more than his sister’s highly biased version of the past. “At any rate, things upstairs are going well, so we thought we’d go see what else needs to be done.”

In retrospect, ‘well’ probably wasn’t the best word. Stiles twitches a little, far less humorously, and has his phone halfway out before he abruptly turns to Peter instead. “Aren’t you all mapped out for onboarding today?” he asks.

“Yes. Well, we were,” Peter says. He takes his phone out and consults the schedule. “Up till about two and a half hours ago, and since—”

“And nobody sent you an updated one or thought about the fact that all the training builds on each other so you can’t really do power-outage drills in the afternoon if you didn’t see where all the circuit breakers are in the morning,” Stiles fills in flatly. He gives the pallet an annoyed look, then twists around to where Scott is just coming back from dropping off the scrap. “All that hassle and then she just dumps them on you. Typical.”

Scott promptly stops. “What?” he says, looking anxiously from Stiles to Derek and Peter. “I…wait, I don’t know…anyway, I’m pretty sure that whatever it was, Lydia didn’t mean—”

“Oh, come on, the last time she did something accidentally was when she said we were best friends,” Stiles mutters. Then he shakes himself and pulls on a cheerful face that is not too far off the one he uses to brush off guests. “Whatever. It’s lunchtime, and since security isn’t saying no, I say let’s treat the newbies. My favorite taco stand changes in fresh masa in twenty minutes, sound good?”

“I like tacos,” is Derek’s immediate contribution. Only afterward does he glance at Peter and Talia.

“Great!” Stiles says. He takes a step back, then rolls his eyes and reverses himself. “Okay, but probably we should get these into the armory first. Even I’ll admit that’s a safety hazard.”

“Here, I still have the door open,” Scott says. 

He holds it for Stiles, then turns in after the other man to help operate the robotic arms that they apparently use to shelve things. After a moment, Derek wanders in and asks how those work, and from the sound of it, showing him is exactly what Stiles needs to get over his bad mood.

“Looks like that’s going well. If you ignore the part where we’re barely into the first day and you’ve already been abandoned,” Talia says.

“Well, I see you’re also making do with an alternate,” Peter snaps back. “Hardly your style, that age range.”

His sister blinks hard. She starts to reply, then pauses and looks between him and the half-open vault door. Then she starts to smirk at him. “You do not honestly think that I’m interested in the son, I know you and I know that, which means you’re only so touchy that you’re managing to insult _yourself_ because you’re nervous. You _care_ , Peter.”

Peter loves his sister. He actually does; nobody outside of the family ever seems to understand this, but he does. It’s just that that love coexists with a frequent desire to forcibly relocate her to the other side of the world, when unfortunately, they’ve had to cohabit for virtually all of their lives (real estate locations meeting their standard of living are not that hard to come by, but luxury real estate within ordinary servicing range of coin-accepting vendors, on the other hand…those travel charges do terrible things to your margin).

“Oh, stop fantasizing about murdering me, I’m just worried about you and Derek,” Talia says after another moment. She gives the vault another glance, then takes a small sensor jammer out of her purse and points it at the floor. “And the rest of us. I just heard from our realtor, they closed on the house sale, so we really don’t have any fallback now.”

“And here I thought that we drew that line when you had your lab shipped out,” Peter says dryly. Then he bends to look around Talia. “I take it that things are going so swimmingly with the father and Chris that we’re covered no matter what? And you’re only down here charming Stiles to ensure that family dinner won’t be awkward?”

She doesn’t take the bait. She’s far too experienced for that. No, what Peter’s sister does is turn off the jammer and put it back in her purse, look him in the eye, and then back-kick the concrete floor so that the heel of her stiletto snaps off.

“Hey, is everyone okay?” Stiles says, popping his head out. “I heard a—”

“We’re fine, we’re fine,” Talia says, valiantly waving him off as she hangs like a leech off Peter’s shoulder, twisting her arms around him in such a way he not only can’t push her off, he also can’t engage any weapons without hurting himself. “I just had a little, well, heel malfunction.”

Scott looks out too. “Oh, no, let me call my mom and see who’s on call right now,” he says. “You should get that x-rayed, feet are tricky and even a tiny stress fracture really should get treated.”

“Thank you, that’s lovely of you,” Talia calls while hopping so that Peter has to start carrying them backwards or take her remaining heel in the middle of _his_ foot. “Peter will help me over to the elevator—oh, no, it’s not really anything, we don’t need to bother the rest of you—”

“You sure?” Stiles says. Then he suddenly looks down, fidgeting a little. “My dad, um, he…he’s, um, he’d be kind of pissed off if you got hurt already. I know he’s probably just grunting a lot but he’s actually really happy to have people to bitch to who aren’t other GMs. Or me.”

Talia wavers, and Peter doesn’t mean in the physical sense. He looks sharply at her and…it actually takes him several seconds to believe it, but that is, in fact, a flicker of guilt on her face. Possibly the first sighting of that emotion since the first time she offloaded a squalling baby on Peter.

“I think Peter’s got it,” Derek says, coming up next to Stiles. He, on the other hand, is his usual dense self and is clearly averting his eyes out of annoyance.

“Just one will do,” Talia says. She hops heavily into Peter, making him waste his breath on huffing instead of speaking, and then smiles at Stiles. “Really, the point isn’t to put more on your plate, and Peter and I have handled worse together. And it’s all right about the grunting, I understand that’s how he and Chris bond.”

Stiles blinks hard, then lets out a startled, bright laugh. “Okay, then,” he says, while Derek stares far too long at him.

There’s infatuated and then there’s completely forgetting all the training certain family members have instilled because they are _professional_ stalkers, Peter thinks irritably as he and Talia limp off, and—he looks at his sister. “All right, all right, you’ve your little private chat now. What do you want?”

Talia glances at him. Then shoves Peter through the wall.

All right, it’s a false wall that swings inward to reveal a storage unit for…paper goods, and poofing into packages of toilet paper isn’t the worst that’s ever happened to Peter. He still doesn’t appreciate it, or when his sister comes strolling into the room, jammer back out and heel reattached to her shoe. _Of course_ she’s wearing the trick ones.

“This is a blind spot in their systems because it’s not anywhere near any critical utilities, isn’t positioned to be useful for an invasion, and it’s toilet paper,” she announces. “What’s the problem, Peter? Spill.”

“How do you know that?” Peter says, still brushing off his clothes.

“Because I’m still on good terms with the security team?” Talia says. She’s sarcastic, but there’s an undercurrent of genuine concern. “You’re supposed to be _on_ that team, Peter.”

“I _know_.” Then Peter manages to catch himself.

He continues tending to his clothes. His sister watches him, with the occasional sigh.

“All right, I’m not actually on good terms,” Talia says, more quietly. She’s still staring expectantly at him. “I don’t think I’m on bad terms either—I think I’m just being overlooked since Lydia appears to be hellbent on something else and John’s supposed to be working with me and Chris, but he’s horrendously busy with those GM conference calls all the time. But clearly, something’s up.”

“Ah, is that where Chris is?” Peter says. 

Talia obviously doesn’t want to, but the right side of her mouth is quirking up. “Well, he’s good at it, and it leaves one of us free to look into whatever is exploding while John is—”

“Stiles and Lydia appear to be fighting,” Peter says, exasperated. “And I wasn’t stalling, I just have nothing to go on besides that, and I haven’t had a chance to dig into it because certain people keep—”

“Oh, Erica was right about that?” Talia says. “Should we tell John?”

“And what would he do?” Peter says. “No, I’m genuinely curious, Talia. I’m not familiar with him, I don’t know how he’d react.”

Which is all very true, but only an amateur (and one without the potential to go further) would think you can’t use the truth as well as you can a lie, and sometimes can use it in situations where you couldn’t use a lie at all. Talia wouldn’t think for a second about batting aside any objection Peter makes, but a question? That she doesn’t know how to answer, since she hasn’t already?

“Well, is it about what Erica said? Things being kept from Stiles?” Talia finally says, which is her way of grudgingly conceding to Peter. “But then wouldn’t he be furious with all of us? You and Derek the most, since you were guarding him without his knowledge?”

“But we didn’t have an obligation at the time to tell him,” Peter points out.

He’d paused a little before replying. She notices, he knows that because her brows rise slightly, and then that _look_ comes over her face, tight mouth and soft eyes, and she insists on hugging him.

“Oh, I think he still likes you,” she says. She reaches up and rumples his head, because she knows how much that irritates him, and then adjusts his tie when he’s got his hands full fixing his hair. “All right, I’ll leave it to you and Derek for now. But keep me posted, would you?”

“Don’t you have enough to do making sure John and Chris don’t leave you in the cellar?” Peter snaps.

Talia’s hand slows, then stops completely, just resting against Peter’s chest for a second. That’s her fear, being pushed to the back—and it’s a fear that’s already come true, with their family completely forced out of their old holdings under her watch. Though Peter’s long since come to think that was a blessing in disguise; they needed to evolve, or else they’d be falling like dominos like the rest of the old guard right now.

And she’s kept them alive, and made the deals that have let them transform themselves. Peter disagrees with her over the details but not over the broader picture—and he loves her, too. “I still think you should have gotten a Marker out of Chris for patching things up between him and John,” he sighs. “Missed opportunity, sister.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Talia straightens her shoulders slightly, just enough to signal that she appreciates the compliment hidden in the barb—and then she pinches his _ear_ , as if he’s a small boy and she’s some demented grandmother. “He’d feel less guilty if I had asked for one, seeing as then he’d have a small chance of redeeming it at some point. Now go charm your head of ops, brother, and I’ll look into Lydia.”

Well, she loves him too, no matter how she decides to show it. And for all her faults, Talia is _very_ good at removing obstacles to their family. So Peter does, in fact, feel better when he exits the room. He and Derek just need to lie low and learn things without making waves till matters are seen to.

* * *

Peter isn’t gone for that long (considering there is no way Derek’s mother actually needs his help to get to the elevator), but while he’s off with Derek’s mom, that Parrish guy comes down and finds Stiles and tells him that one of the spider pieces is too big to fit into any of the elevators and while they could cut it up with blowtorches, that’d take too long if they want to reopen the patio for happy hour.

“That’s not really his problem,” Derek says.

Parrish gives him an odd look, as if all of the staff aren’t keeping tabs on the Stiles-Lydia fight—Scott’s terrible at pretending that’s not what he’s checking on his phone, when Stiles is _right there_ , and Stiles is a lot better at looking just tolerant about it—and then turns right back to Stiles. “The other alternative’s we just build a decorative fence around it and call it a new sculpture.”

Stiles makes a face at him. “Seriously? I mean, I know we use that one all the time, but…again?”

“Isaac’s already working on the artist’s statement plaque,” Parrish says. “He’s getting pretty good at all the art-babble. But seriously, somebody reported to your dad that the patio would be open again so if we’re pushing that back, we’ll have to tell him.”

Scott spins around, then makes stupidly obvious gestures to Parrish from behind Stiles, as if they can’t all see how pissed off Stiles suddenly is. But Stiles holds it in and just breathes twice, then shakes it back into plain frustration. “Okay, fine, go with that,” he mutters, turning towards the vault. “And—finish putting in the tiles, security can beef up the visual monitors or something while we figure out how to replace the crowd-control system.”

Parrish confirms he’s got all that and will get it going, then amiably wanders off as if nothing serious happened and Scott hasn’t gone off with barely an excuse about the bathroom to frantically text about it. People working at this hotel seem to be really good at a couple things and actively trying to fail at the rest, Derek thinks as he follows Stiles.

“Sorry, did you need something?” Stiles asks, looking back at him.

Derek stops. Then hears somebody coming up and turns to look, but it’s just Peter, and Peter doesn’t look happy with what he’s seeing. Either that, or he and Derek’s mom just had a fight and Peter’s going to ruin some alliances again.

A scuffed foot catches Derek’s attention and he twists back to see Stiles disappearing into the vault. He ducks after the other man, because Peter will ruin whatever Peter wants to ruin whatever Derek does, so he should stick with what he has a chance of keeping up with. “Hey,” Derek says, grabbing the door and holding it open. “Security—so do we need to do something? Tell somebody?”

Stiles stops and looks at him again, and Derek…probably should have stopped after ‘do something.’ But then Stiles grimaces and lifts one hand to rub his face. “Right, she’s not even—and I promised you lunch and this is just…”

“We can postpone lunch if something’s come up,” Peter says, arriving next to Derek.

“No,” Stiles says after a second. He hesitates, then gives himself a shake and comes up with a determined expression. “No, honestly, I should just—I should leave that, no point in getting even more—I said it was security anyway, I should stick to that. And Parrish can tell her, that’s his _job_. Let’s just go get tacos.”

He still sounds pretty pissed-off, but he’s moving out of the vault and look, he’s head of operations, if nothing else, Derek would think Stiles would know what everybody else’s job is supposed to be. So if he says that somebody’s got it covered, Derek’s not going to worry about it.

Peter isn’t objecting either. In fact, he’s very interested in discussing with Stiles the comparative merits of all nearby staff favorites, from menus through relative willingness to lend _and_ take back a body-sized cooler, no questions asked.

He and Derek also are making sure that all sightlines and suspicious persons are spotted and watched, and Derek actually thinks they’re doing that well up till they’re seated in a back booth of the taco place and Stiles takes a half-eaten fish taco out of his mouth and points it at Peter. “Okay, so, who’s still trying to kill me and Dad and when are you going after them?”

Peter’s in the middle of critiquing the salsa verde, but he doesn’t let that get to him. “…roasted version any day. And we’re not. Per your father, we’re leaving it to his Asian contacts to wrap up.”

“No, I know about that part and Dad’s being _way_ nicer than he has to be, especially with how Seoul’s always calling him up to complain about stuff that is a whole ocean away from being Dad’s job,” Stiles snorts. He takes another bite of his taco and chases it down with some tamarind soda, then leans back to look at them. “But you guys are still doing the whole bodyguard thing. Come on, it’s not like that’s a secret now either.”

For some reason Peter’s not immediately jumping on that, even though it seems like the most obvious opening to talk about their skills (and Derek is not good at that stuff, and honestly has never really wanted to be good at it when he could just get onto actually doing it). “Yeah, but it’s not related to that,” Derek ends up saying to fill in the space. “We’re just—”

“What?” Stiles says, and while he’s not yelling at them, or even looking that annoyed, there’s just this edge to his voice. Kind of like he’s tired, and kind of like he’s also just expecting a load of bullshit at this point. “What’d they say? Because I saw the job description but…let me just say, your job description at this hotel isn’t exactly set in stone. I mean, look, it’s not like if you get hired to clean rooms, we’ll make you cook, but when things get crazy and you happen to be around, they just—they get done, one way or the other.”

“That seems reasonable enough to me, and it’s certainly nothing we aren’t already accustomed to,” Peter says, finally rejoining the conversation. “We’re a rather small shop these days, and when you’re small, you learn to cover each other.”

He reaches for the extra salsa and Stiles pushes the red one towards him. Peter smiles and Stiles relaxes a little. “Yeah, that’ll be good for this. So what’d she tell you to do with me?”

“Not to hide things,” Derek says when Peter goes silent again. He frowns at his uncle, wondering what the hell is wrong with him. It can’t be that Lydia’s gotten to him, because Peter doesn’t care about that sort of thing, and…Derek’s pretty sure his mom is fine with him and Peter and Stiles. She usually yells at them earlier than this if she’s not. “Honestly, she hasn’t really gone over you.”

“But you two were hired specifically to be my ‘internal management,’” Stiles says, with that weird edge in his voice again.

“Well, that’s what the description said, but Derek’s right in that it hasn’t been discussed. When we first heard why you were hiring, my sister—sensibly, I think—realized we’d better make sure that didn’t eliminate any chance of a job interview, so we intervened a few times,” Peter says. He’s being careful about what he says, which means he’s rattled, because usually he hides it a lot better when he’s trying to tiptoe around something. “We haven’t been told to _stop_ that, and since we haven’t yet been told what our duties are now, it…doesn’t seem like a bad idea to continue. Hasn’t seemed like a bad idea, at any rate.”

Stiles frowns as if he doesn’t quite follow Peter. Then his eyes widen slightly and he pushes himself up against the booth. “Oh, hey, sorry, I didn’t mean—I’m not mad at you guys. You didn’t work here yet, and you didn’t even know me, except as the sarcastic guy at reception.”

“You actually weren’t that sarcastic,” Derek says without thinking. Then decides he could use more salsa too, when Stiles looks his way. “Not right then. Later, yeah.”

He looks back up when he hears Stiles snickering, and finds the other man scarfing down the rest of that taco with a happier look on his face. “Man. Okay, I should probably apologize for all of that now,” Stiles mumbles through his food. “I was kind of—even when I thought you were just guests, I was pretty nasty to you.”

“You had more important things to worry about,” Peter shrugs.

“Or so I thought, but what’s a couple special dry-cleaning orders when your dad’s being shot at all over town,” Stiles mutters, going grumpy again.

Peter almost winces in public, which has Derek checking whether any of the counter staff are paying attention (they aren’t and good, because the tacos are great and Derek would like to come back again and sometimes Peter has a really broad definition of eliminating all witnesses). Then he leans over the table, stooping till Stiles, who’d been moodily messing with the guacamole, looks up at him. 

“Stiles,” he says. “I can promise you that we’re not here to undermine—”

Who rolls his eyes and picks up the guacamole. “Ugh, okay, I’m just cranky and I know you report into her, I mean, that’s the whole idea of—”

“—we came here for _you_ ,” Peter insists. 

He’s got that slight tremble in his voice, which isn’t a waver so much as a sign of how much emotion he’s stuffing into the words. He’s good at that, the earnest thing. Good at making sure it comes off as real and not cloying or childish—sincerity that makes people laugh at you doesn’t convince any more than an obvious lie does. Hell, Derek believes him (and usually regrets it later, okay, but this is right now and Peter means it).

Stiles looks at Peter and Derek can tell the man’s still reluctant to buy into it, but he wants to. It’s all over how Stiles isn’t noticing how all of the guacamole has already flopped into his taco and is still shaking the little plastic container. He shifts his shoulders against the booth, looking more than a little uncomfortable, and Peter smoothly shifts back and lets out a soft, self-deprecating chuckle.

“I’ll admit we aren’t exactly in the best position to be convincing at the moment, but we did have other options,” Peter says. He reaches out and takes the empty guacamole container, and as Stiles is finally noticing why and flushing, replaces it with his still half-full one. “We considered all of them before deciding that seeking opportunities here would be the best for us.”

“And you decided this was going to work out the best for you, because of what, the scintillating company?” Stiles says. Still wary, but the curiosity seems to be winning.

Peter laughs again, then pulls over his drink and takes a long, showy suck at its straw; Stiles shifts again, mostly from the waist down. “No, clearly there’d have to be more factors than that. My sister’s no fool, however obsessed with outdated weaponry she may seem. But the company was one of them. After all, we were on our own for a very, very long time, and it’s a…it’s a major change for us. So the company is important.”

“Seeing as we’re not exactly known for being the people you take home from a party,” Derek says.

That was _not_ where they were supposed to go, says the annoyed look Peter shoots Derek. But Peter’s barely got the time to be frustrated, because Stiles is snorting and shaking his head. “Okay, well, we’ve got training for that,” he says. He gets a fork and removes some of the guacamole, then rolls up his taco. “So much training. Trust me, if you’ve still got worries about fitting in, you can check that one off. I overhauled the Hospitality 101 course two years ago and you’re not remotely the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Peter’s still giving Derek a glare, but Stiles does seem to be relaxing, so it’s just the don’t-sleep-tonight-nephew one. “Excellent,” he says, switching on a smile and turning back to Stiles. “And as for you, there’s really no need to worry about our loyalties. We’ll be professional, of course, but we _didn’t_ come here to be the yes-men for some overreaching—”

Stiles’ head snaps back up, and the stare he’s giving Peter is—it’s impressive. Not only does it shut Peter down immediately, it shuts him down so fast that his hand freezes in place where he’d been putting down his drink, and Derek swears that the _cup_ hovers for a second before dropping that last inch to rattle against the table.

“Excuse me, I’m sure that you aren’t saying on your _first day_ that you’re going to ignore our _head of security_. At a _Continental_.” Then Stiles smiles and it makes the stare even icier. “Right?”

Peter blinks slowly. Opens his mouth a little. Raises his right hand.

“Oh, good, Scott wasn’t fifteen minutes behind reading the GPS again,” breaks in a new, slightly breathless voice. Erica hustles up to the table with a weirdly twitchy Cora in tow, immediately shouldering Peter aside so that she can show Stiles something on her phone. “I know it’s lunch, but we have an issue. Cleaning just pulled this from under a bed on the seventh floor.”

Stiles glances at the phone, then looks again. He puts his taco down and leans forward to squint at the screen. “What, _again_?” he mutters, annoyed and impressed and incredulous…but not actually surprised. “Honestly, everybody’s a seasoned pro, you don’t get membership otherwise, and still. People do this. Why.”

“Is it a dead body?” Derek asks.

Cora twitches, then sidles…like she’s actually trying to hide behind Peter? Who also looks confused about this.

“Why would I bug Stiles in the middle of lunch about a dead body?” Erica says. “That’d be _normal_. No, this asshole left his boxes of maggots.”

“See, this is why the other Continentals have a no-pets policy, and why I actually kind of wish we’d go with that too, but no, we go the extra mile and recognize that assassins love pets too, and then this happens,” Stiles grumbles, shoving back from the table. His hand lands near his table and he gives it a longing look, then sighs and pushes it away. “Let me guess, we called and they want us to ship them back.”

Erica snaps her fingers and then points them at Stiles. “You know it.”

“Pets?” Derek finally says. “Those are the—don’t those eat flesh? When it’s still alive?”

“Well, they’re sure as hell not therapy animals,” Erica snorts. 

“Okay, okay, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re pets or tools of the trade, they belong to a guest and we do have a return policy,” Stiles says. He squeezes out of the booth, already on his phone. “I’ll figure out which vendor handles insect shipping—oh, no, you two don’t have to go back, finish your lunch.”

Half out of his chair, Peter starts to protest, only for Erica to maneuver a waiter with doggie bags between him and Stiles. Then she takes the doggie bags, divides them between her hands, and smashes each handful into Peter’s and Derek’s chests.

“You’re not going to murder me because I just saved your infatuated asses from a very embarrassing rejection,” Erica says. “Seriously, did you not listen to _anything_ I said before?”

“You said don’t let guests see? I don’t see any guests here,” Derek snaps.

“Right, sure, and you know what I don’t see either? Stiles warming up to you guys because of how swoony he is over your mighty muscles defending him from the Lydia,” Erica shoots right back. She steps back and dusts off her hands, then puts them on her hips and stares down at them (even though _Cora’s_ got a good inch on her). “They’re friends, idiots. Just fighting, and the way to fix that isn’t to take sides like this is _The Godfather_. Honestly, if you’re going to work with us, you really, really need to learn how to deal with people.”

“But it’s Lydia,” Cora says.

Derek gives her a startled look, but…nope, his sister is honest-to-God intimidated. She doesn’t get that nervous when _Peter_ threatens her.

“Yeah. I know. But it doesn’t matter, okay? Whoever they are, if they’re causing problems with the hotel, you handle them,” Erica says. Pauses, and then she heaves a put-upon sigh. “Okay, fine. Pack up those tacos and come back with me and I’ll show you a couple tricks. God, trainees take forever.”

Cora starts packing tacos. “Shut up,” she mutters. “You have _no idea_.”

She’s actually right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actually, landscapers probably have very high rank in the _Wick_ universe. Got to know what to plant over the bodies, after all.
> 
> One NYC thing _Wick_ does...well, I don't think it's a mistake, I think it's a deliberate elision for the sake of plotting, but John's house with that kind of yardage and elite neighborhood air comes off as located way too close to Manhattan (unless he's actually living in northern NJ, which doesn't seem right either). I don't think that body-disposal crews would exist in every neighborhood in the commuter 'burbs (or even in the outer edges of the outer boroughs), so they must have to travel a good hour or more to get over to him.
> 
> The Hales are weird, and I refuse to believe it's all down to being werewolves. It's a lot more entertaining that way, and also, a lot better for developing character interactions (Peter is pouting this entire chapter).
> 
> That might be a veiled reference to _Once Upon A Time In Mexico_ where one character shot a cook simply because the cook was way too good at cooking.


	14. Peter and Derek

Peter honestly doesn’t enjoy seeing his family cower in fear. Even if you believe he’s utterly heartless, it makes no sense for him to ignore a clear sign that one, a threat is close to him, and two, people who he’s helped raise and train since birth are not holding up. Although most of the time, that second one actually doesn’t reflect on his efforts.

“Because this is fucked up!” Cora hisses at him and Derek (mostly him) once they’re back at the hotel. “You and Mom said that this was going to be easier than what we were doing before.”

“I said no such thing, and you know I don’t speak for your mother,” Peter mutters back, while keeping an eye on Erica, who’s not so far ahead of them and not so engaged in inspecting kitchen scraps for the maggots that she can’t eavesdrop. “Also, this was a collective decision. You were all shown the offer details and given the option to decline.”

“Yeah, because going solo right now’s such a great idea,” Cora says. “Besides, like either you or Mom really would’ve let us go off. First time we hit an overdrawn account, you know you would’ve been down on it just because it pisses you off to see any Hale get cheated.”

Peter certainly didn’t have to teach his sister’s children their sense of entitlement—though before he has to point that out, Derek decides to be helpful and thwaps his sister with the towels he’s still lugging around. “More like it looks really bad for the rest of us if you’re out there being that stupid,” he says. “Besides, why are you even complaining? Mom said you and Laura were going to help her in procurement. That should be easy, that’s just more shopping.”

Erica pauses in the middle of quizzing the sous-chef on why they’ve got so much rotten filet to not-so-discreetly snigger behind her hand. Disturbingly, so does the chef, even though a second before he’d been wiping the sweat off his brow with a shaking hand.

“Children,” Peter says under his breath. He closes his eyes, then opens them and turns to Derek and Cora. “ _Out_.”

Cora looks as if she’d like to say it’s about time, but she at least has enough self-preservation to not actually let those words pass her lips. Derek, on the other hand, never misses an opportunity to act contrary to his desired life expectancy and lets his eyes bulge at Peter. “Hey, I work with you,” he says. “I don’t work with Cora.”

“Why, yes, Derek, we are working, as a matter of fact. And because we are working, we are going to be professional about it and not turn up our noses at something simply because it doesn’t fall under the original brief,” Peter says through gritted teeth. Then he pivots to Cora, catching her mid-smirk, and yes, he is pleased to see her choke on it (cowering from _him_ is entirely different). “Tell me you actually were assigned to something, and haven’t just been following Erica around.”

“What, no—listen, she’s crazy, and the only reason I was interrupting your lunch was because it was the first chance I had all day to get away,” Cora says. She glances around Peter, then shuffles to the side so that both he and Derek are between her and Erica. “She keeps making me take things to _Lydia_ for approval. I don’t even _work_ for that— _you’re_ supposed to.”

Well, Peter isn’t so sure about that either, considering everything he does only seems to shuffle him farther and farther from—and suddenly he has the answer. It’s so simple it’s absurd, but then, that’s the effect their world can have sometimes, so caught up in its convoluted customs that one forgets what the target was in the first place.

“What were you supposed to take to her?” he asks Cora.

She looks suspicious at the change of subject, but grudgingly takes out a small manila packet. “Upholstery samples. I think.” She’s holding the packet by the very edges and the second Peter’s fingers touch it, she releases it so that Peter has to snatch it to safety. “But there were the carpet swatches and the tile chips and the one had little wire tentacles sticking out of it that _moved_ and the other has a _shrapnel rating_ and isn’t this supposed to be a hotel? Why do they have so much stuff that can kill you in it?”

“Because this is the behind-the-scenes view,” Derek says, though he looks more than a little alarmed himself. “Just in case.”

“For _what_? In case all the guests turn into zombies at the same time?” Cora hisses back.

“Look after your sister,” Peter says, and when Derek whirls on him, he gives his nephew a consoling pat on the shoulder and exits, because one person in this damn family is going to remember they have skills and how to use them. And then he goes to find Lydia.

Predictably, she finds him. He’s just gotten into the hallway of staff offices when Lydia emerges from the breakroom with a fresh cup of coffee and an arched brow. “You do realize that shrapnel ratings rank materials based on how likely they are to _not_ fragment, don’t you?”

“I can assure you that I’m very familiar with them, and that my niece also has been instructed in the past on how to read them,” Peter says dryly. “But no doubt she’ll welcome a quick refresher, which I did see was on the list of mandatory training courses.”

Lydia stops and looks him over. She takes three sips of coffee at a gratingly leisurely pace, then finally waves for him to follow her into an office. “Samples.”

Peter hands over the packet and watches her open it. The contents are, in fact, small fabric squares, accompanied by slips of paper that detail their resistance to both stains and small-bore ammunition. She spreads them out on the desk and then pulls out a binder as thick as both of his forearms stacked. It’s full of identical swatches pinned to pages with dates and room names written at the top, which go back at least forty years.

“You’re supposed to be keeping an eye on Stiles,” Lydia says, comparing swatches.

“Actually, I’m supposed to be training on the guest background file system,” Peter says, helping himself to an empty chair. He smooths out his suit, then smiles pleasantly at her. “Per the schedule you sent us.”

Lydia puts the swatches down slowly, every movement infused with disbelief. “And you were planning to follow that to the letter?”

“Oh, my deepest apologies, did you hire us specifically to disobey you?” Peter snaps before he can help it. “I don’t remember seeing that anywhere in the brief.”

They stare at each other for a few seconds, and then Lydia unceremoniously pushes aside the binder. She’s no longer putting on that air of indifferent contempt—she actually looks focused on Peter, and Peter forces himself to shrug off the creeping unease that accompanies said focus. She’s no more intimidating than any number of opponents he’s overcome in the past, and this time, he actually has a genuine grievance on his side.

“Talia was in here while you were out to lunch,” Lydia suddenly says. “Reminding me that you’ve made a number of sacrifices including your independent status, and that you didn’t do that to be trampled on.”

“Well, that is correct,” Peter says after a moment. He shouldn’t be surprised Talia was so quick off the mark, he supposes; she would be that way for a job. “We also didn’t agree to join your staff so that we could have a front-row seat to gross incompetency. You can do better.”

Lydia’s lips thin till they nearly disappear, quite an accomplishment with that shade of red. She suddenly sits up and puts both hands flat on the desk—they’re empty but Peter knows better than to _not_ shift his arm so that his draw to the underarm holster is clear. Then, still staring at him, she reaches over and pulls a tablet to lie flat between them.

“You’re here because you have enough experience, and claim to have enough sense, to know when something needs to be handled without having to check a rule book or wait for someone to tell you to do it,” she says, unlocking the tablet and then swiping up a series of spreadsheets. “Things are a little uneven right now because—”

“You didn’t handle Stiles quite as well as you thought you had?” Peter suggests.

But suddenly Lydia’s amused, not angry. “Oh, I don’t handle him,” she says, smiling at him. “This is what you do need to learn, Mr. Hale, Stiles isn’t someone you handle. He’s someone you look after, and make sure that he has everything he needs to do what he needs to do.”

“Which was actually my intent,” Peter says. She looks away from him, not cowed but dismissive, and for some reason that trips his temper in a way usually only reserved for Talia. “I like him. I like _him_. Not this hotel or the general Continental mystique, which you people are doing an excellent job of demolishing, or the so-called immunity given to its staff that is so tattered you need _us_ to shore it up. Yes, we have sense, and that’s because we’re not taken in by all the meaningless trappings—”

“Well, why do you like him?” Lydia prods, one brow cocked at an irritatingly incredulous angle.

“Because he’s loyal,” Peter answers immediately. Even as the words are coming out of his mouth, he understands the trap Lydia’s set for him and sees it looping up around him, and yet…sometimes being tied to a position makes more sense. “It’s not blind loyalty, he clearly sees all the flaws just as well, but he’s—he’d clearly rather stay and find an inventive way to remake them into something he loves being loyal to, instead of running off. I admire that.”

And finally, Peter seems to have caught Lydia off-guard. She frowns at him, her finger aimlessly swiping spreadsheets to and fro, and twice rethinks what she’s going to say in response. Then she settles herself back in her chair, and tips up the tablet.

“Stiles is sixteen percent more efficient at handling a breach of the code of conduct than the most skilled current member of Security,” she says, pointing at a line graph. Then she moves another one over it. “He’s also thirty-seven percent more likely to binge-shop on black-market robotics and forty-two percent more likely to have an insomnia or caffeine withdrawal episode after a shift where he’s doing that instead of his actual job in Operations.”

Peter doesn’t quite follow. He’s still irritated at her and almost looses another sarcastic comment instead, but…something in her demeanor convinces him that he might actually be talking to a human being, rather than to a posture. So he leans over and dutifully looks at the graphs, and they’re considerably more detailed than her skeleton summary.

So detailed, in fact, that he makes a mental note to steal his sister’s jammers for his and Derek’s suite (he already installed his own but if Lydia’s keeping notes on _tooth-brushing time_ , he clearly needs to ratchet up the interference emissions). “You appear to be saying that while Stiles is fantastic at security—”

“He doesn’t really like it. It just frustrates him and he gets angry that we can’t do better and I want him to skip that and get to making us better,” Lydia finishes. “Which is exactly why John and I didn’t immediately tell him everything about what was going on.”

Peter looks up. “Did you happen to explain that to him, at any point?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I did,” Lydia says curtly.

“…did it involve graphs?” Peter says, glancing at the tablet again. “Or was it an in-person conversation?”

Lydia puts the tablet down and then shoves it under some papers. “I really don’t see why that matters.”

“Well, because I’d like him to be happy too, and right now he’s clearly not, and even more clearly, it has to do with you,” Peter says, standing up. “But never mind, I completely understand the brief now. Thank you very much, and do let me know when you’d like to reschedule those training sessions. Derek and I probably should learn how to submit an expense report properly.”

He smiles at her, right when she’s about to order him to sit back down. He smiles as if he really does understand everything, and Lydia stiffens, then subsides into a dismissive flick of her fingers. Because of course she’s not going to make him explain to her exactly what she can’t figure out on her own. Peter actually doesn’t know everything (he’s far less conceited, and more genuinely knowledgeable, than people including his immediate family will admit), but he does know this: he’s getting the hang of it.

* * *

The tricks Erica promises to show them apparently consist entirely of snarky comments about how people are screwing up, which Derek already knows by virtue of being born with his family. She also gets distracted really easily, and doesn’t seem to notice when Derek and Cora don’t come back up for the second batch of maggot shipping boxes and instead take a detour over to the sommelier’s suite to see their mother.

Cora’s complaining the entire way about why is she stuck with the crazy front of house people, and finally Derek can’t take it anymore. “Because when Mom asked, you said you wanted to get more time talking to people who aren’t us, and you didn’t want to do bodyguard stuff.”

“Yeah, I know, but why does that mean that I have to meet all of the insane vendors on day one?” Cora hisses. “Seriously. All of them.”

“What are you talking about, you’ve carried a body bag before,” Derek mutters, punching in the keycode for the staff entrance to the cellar. “Also, maybe because they’re hazing you and it’s working?”

His sister goes quiet. Then she punches his arm, so that he knows it wasn’t because he actually came up with something to shut her up. “I wish it was body bags. I’d know where to put my hands on a body bag. And if you think it’s so easy compared to being ignored by Lydia, then why don’t _you_ go meet the plumbers with Erica? Do you know what they’re digging out of the pipes here?”

“Stop whining, you get a hazmat suit and get to just stand around and supervise that,” Laura says from inside the room.

This part of the cellar is the administrative end, so Derek comes into an office space with a couple desks, a big LCD touchscreen that’s constantly flipping through high-def close-up slides of current armory stock, and several boxes of papers that Laura seems to be going through. Seeing as Laura once volunteered to sit in a swamp for twelve hours to avoid that kind of intel work, Derek assumes she’s being blackmailed and immediately goes to tell Peter that’s not going to help.

But his uncle isn’t back from talking to Lydia, and when Derek returns to the office, his sisters have given up on the paperwork and are huddled in the corner, whispering and looking at something between them. Then they realize he’s there and they stop and look up at him.

“What?” Derek says.

“See, he doesn’t care at all,” Cora mutters.

Laura sighs and puts her arm around Cora. “Derek’s not that antisocial, he just…maybe _is_ that masochistic…”

Derek debates looking for his mother. Or Peter, even if he’s still with Lydia, or Stiles, the guy he’s supposedly been hired to watch. And then he grits his teeth and shuts the door behind him, and looks at his sisters. “ _What_.”

“Nothing,” Cora says. She pulls out a switchblade and starts flipping it between her fingers. Then she rolls her eyes and puts it away and glowers up at him. “Look, this just—isn’t really what I thought it was gonna be, okay? And don’t yell at me, I know it’s important and I know all the reasons we’re doing this. It’s just—just—”

“This isn’t easy,” Laura chimes in. She’s usually the more reasonable one, or at least, she will try to explain herself instead of just storming off if she sees that Derek doesn’t understand what she’s saying. But this time she suddenly gets annoyed with him, throwing out her arm and jabbing at the papers she’d abandoned. “Listen, we’re good at what we do, right? We wouldn’t even have gotten in the door here, let alone got the job, if we weren’t. Right?”

“Right,” Derek says slowly. “But nobody said it was going to be eas—”

“Well, but this is insane. It’s _insane_ , okay, as in that there is the checklist of stuff we need to audit for one back-up Kevlar vendor,” Laura says. She looks at him, then slowly turns her head to face the paper. “One. Back-up. Vendor. One. And we don’t just know stuff like how many employees they have or where they worked before or who supplies them. No, Derek. We know how they take their coffee. We know _where_ they get their coffee. We have stats for how often they go somewhere _new_ for coffee.”

“So maybe we need to shoot them some time,” Derek says.

Cora flops her head back against Laura’s shoulder. “Told you he wouldn’t get it.”

“No, I get it, I just don’t see what’s the big deal about something we’d do on a job anyw—”

“We’re not doing _that_ , Derek. They’re already doing it just fine,” Laura says, eyes wide, hair starting to fluff out like it does when she’s really panicked. “It’s that our job is supposed to _improve_ on that.”

“And I’m supposed to come up with ways to make the plumbers better, when they’re already turning half-digested human ears into potting soil?” Cora says in a whispery kind of screech. “Have you seen the composting system, Derek? Have you? Did you see how _fast_ that thing spits out mulch? Why do they even need to bury bodies?”

“Because then the compost gets too hot and it’s the wrong season to recapture the heat so you just end up lowering the environmentally-friendly rating,” Chris Argent says, coming into the room. As if he just does that. And talks to them. Like they talk to each other.

They all stare at each other for a few seconds. Well, Derek and his sisters do, while Chris eyes them, briefly looks away so that he can drop off a notebook next to Laura’s stack of papers, and then looks up again.

“Your mother’s up front with John and a VIP guest,” Chris says, a little less like they’re long-time neighbors. “I think she’ll be done in a couple more minutes….and you were getting a little loud.”

Laura points. “Soundproofed doors.”

A flicker of annoyance goes through Chris’ eyes. “Yeah.”

Derek straightens up while his sister’s jaw hangs a little. Then Laura catches herself and pushes Cora off her, getting up so that she and Derek can cover more lines of sight.

Chris sighs. “Well, they’re pretty hard to close quietly and we don’t want to let the guests on and I heard you and thought I’d see—”

“You are _so_ not our stepdad. Like, not ever,” Cora says.

“—if I should get your mother, because I told her and I told Peter I’m not even touching that,” Chris says, with enough of a twist to his mouth to be convincing. “I don’t even know why Peter would ask that. You’re all grown anyway, and I know exactly what he’s done to every ex Talia’s ever had.”

“Probably so he can get out of doing it,” Derek says. “He hates babysitting.”

“Also he thinks that nervous tic of yours is funny,” Laura says.

For a second, Chris looks as if he might retreat, and maybe take a blast shield with him. But then he takes a breath and pulls himself up, and grimaces his way back to blackly amused. “Yeah, okay, can see that. So look, your mother apparently wants to date me.”

“Oh, God, we’re okay with that. She wants somebody, she gets them,” Laura says, rolling her eyes. “We’re not gonna give you a shovel talk so stop acting like this needs to be awkward. It doesn’t.”

“Thanks,” Chris says dryly. “Then we can skip to where I wouldn’t agree to date her if I didn’t think it had a…if I didn’t kind of like her, and since I like her, I’d like her to not have to worry about her kids hating what she’s dragged them into. So do you?”

This is why they don’t talk, Derek thinks. More than the whole his family tried to kill Derek’s family and did manage to drive them off the West Coast thing, Chris just knows them really, really well, and he’s really, really good at not dying. It’s really annoying.

“It’s our first day,” Cora says. Even she seems surprised that she’s the first to speak up, and she looks around a bit before grudgingly accepting reality. “Look, everything is just…freaky. Like—like it’s already working, and the more training we get, the more obvious that is, and I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. So I’m having a moment, okay? Can I just?”

Chris…shrugs and then withdraws. “Sure.”

He actually walks off. He turns around and gives them his back and walks off. Laura almost trips in place, she’s so incredulous, and Derek would be right there with her if he wasn’t already tripping over what his other sister had just said. Actually, both sisters, now that he thinks about it, and Laura’s supposed to be the _least_ crazy one of their generation.

“You think it’s perfect, that’s what’s bugging you?” Derek says, turning around. “Are you kidding me? This place is crazy and I don’t know how the hell things get done, it just—they just _do_.”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying, and when you turn around everybody else is just, oh, this is how it is, and they just roll with it and I just feel like I’m the noob, Derek. I feel like I’m an idiot. Okay?” Cora snaps at him.

“Okay, but trust me, it’s not working because they know exactly what they’re doing all the time. You should’ve come with me and Peter, you would’ve seen how much of this shit they’re just making up on the spot,” Derek snaps back at her. He turns to Laura—nope, her face still says she’s on Cora’s side, even if she’s being less bratty about it—and then almost turns to call Chris back, he’s that desperate for somebody who understands what he’s saying. “Listen, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing either, but at least I can see that. They’re not just freaky, okay? They are messed up, and that’s me saying it. They’re…they’re kind of us, honestly. Just with different things.”

Laura clears her throat, then raises her hand defensively when Derek jerks towards her. They look at each other, and then he grimaces and she snorts and pushes her hair back from her face, while Cora slowly stops looking as if she’s on the verge of screaming for their mother.

“So…what, you’re saying we’re actually all starting from the same place here?” Laura finally says. “Seriously?”

“I’m saying I don’t think they always know what’s up either, they just are—I guess they are better at faking that than we are,” Derek mutters. “But I don’t think that that part is freaky. I mean, I think we can learn that.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Cora doesn’t look completely convinced, but she at least doesn’t look like she’s going to run out of the room and jump on the first flight to New York. “I still don’t think I should have to deal with Lydia.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll…tell…somebody. Just…I don’t know, tell Erica you need to use the restroom the next time she does that and sneak out a window. You know how to do that.”

“Not with their security system, I don’t,” Cora says. Then she looks at Laura. “Hey, you think we can weird Argent out enough to make him tell us how he does it? He does seem into Mom. Almost as much as Derek is into Stiles.”

“Yeah, how’s that going?” Laura asks. And then she pulls a sympathy face, and starts moving like she’s going to come around Cora and hug him or something. “Wow, and with Peter all over him too? Do you need—”

“No,” Derek says, turning on his heel.

“Oh, come on, we can help,” Laura calls after him. “For real! Not fatally!”

“At least we leave enough to mop up, that’s better than Peter!” Cora adds. “You already have the towels for it!”

Derek shakes his head, then lifts his arms behind his head and makes a cut-you gesture at them. Which is how he almost walks into Stiles’ father, coming the other way in the hall.

“Are you threatening somebody?” Stiles’ father frowns.

“No,” Derek says, yanking his arms down. He does not look for Chris or his mother, or otherwise not look the other man in the eye, or do anything else that might come off as suspicious. “It’s just my sisters back there.”

Not only does Stiles’ father look like he’s not buying it, he looks like Derek’s just confirmed and explained it all to him. “Right,” he says. His body shifts as if he might just leave it there, before it gets worse, and then he sighs and turns back to Derek. “The first day’s always rough.”

Derek doesn’t quite hide his grimace.

“Yeah, and this isn’t exactly the most user-friendly job, as my son would put it,” John goes on, tilting his head to look over Derek.

They haven’t really interacted too much, but Derek’s seen enough to know that one, John had an idea what his son was up to with Derek and Peter way before he was ever told, and two, he’s not nearly the harassed, folksy mid-manager type he acts like. “We’re working on it,” Derek says, wishing Peter would get back from Lydia’s office already. Whenever Derek really could _use_ his uncle’s ability to misdirect a traffic light…typical Peter. “We’re just trying to listen to everything we’re being told.”

John studies him for another second, then offers up a wry smile. “Sure, and I’m glad you didn’t add that you’re trying to follow it too, because that’d ruin my idea that you actually really do _get_ this place, with what you just said to your sisters.”

“Okay,” Derek says, because he doesn’t follow that because when he parses it, it means a compliment, but it sounded like a warning. And the way John’s looking at him right now, it’s almost like the man is trying to plead with him (it’s a lot like the face Derek’s mom would give Peter when Peter was watching them as kids and they’d broken something of his). “I…am…”

“I knew I should’ve gotten back to the hotel sooner, but Chris was healing up and the GMs were giving me a hassle over getting him in, as if it’d really be that much more work than your entire family,” John suddenly says, putting up one hand to massage the side of his face like he’s got a headache. “You’d think they’d be happy I was taking both sides of that old feud out of the…anyway. Stiles and Lydia. I know, and I’m sorry, and I’ll talk to them once I get this last damn call done.”

“Hey. Wait,” Derek says. He might not know where the hell he stands with John, but he knows knowledge when he sees it in somebody’s face, and sometimes you just can’t wait to find somebody who knows it _and_ can be asked without it blowing up on you. “So why are they fighting, anyway?”

“I told her not to tell him because I didn’t want him to worry, and then she didn’t tell me everything that she was seeing with you and Peter because she knew you were helping and didn’t want me distracted from what I already had, and I think we both lost track for a couple days,” John says. He presses at his right eye. “It wasn’t the greatest month—anyway. Usually Lydia doesn’t do what I say that much to the letter, but…not like that’s her fault, I shouldn’t be expecting her to think of everything around here. If it’s not fair to put that on Stiles, it’s not fair to put it on her either. So look, I’ll talk to them tomorrow at the latest. Just hang in there till then. I know it doesn’t look like it, but we do try to take care of people here.”

Derek…decides to go with that. He still doesn’t think it makes complete sense, but okay, at least somebody both knows what’s going on and is actually prepared to deal with it instead of just running around making comments about how terrible it is, and—

John catches his elbow. “Oh, so…we…should…at some point, your, well, your mother,” he starts, a lot more awkwardly.

“I’m okay doing that whenever you want to talk about Stiles,” Derek immediately says. Because at least he knows how to find an exit when he needs one (maybe he’s not always the greatest at actually executing his exit, but he’s working on that, okay?).

“Fair enough,” John says after a moment, looking relieved. “All right. Well, see you tomorrow.”

Derek nods, John moves on, and then Derek ducks into the nearest room that doesn’t have his sisters in it. He waits till he can figure out where his mother is, then logs into the hotel system from his phone and pulls up a map and finds a way out of the cellar that doesn’t involve passing her. So yeah, apparently he’s picking up a few things despite the whole day.

Of course, then he goes off to find Peter. Because…yeah, honestly, he’s probably going to need his uncle for this one. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole open an account system of setting a bounty on somebody's head in the _Wick_ movies must either limit who has the ability to call the operators to only people with established credit, or have some kind of enforcement system for people who call and then back out of paying. I kind of lean towards the latter, given the hints that Winston (and thus maybe the Continentals in general?) already act as neutral recordkeepers for blood debts, so it's not too far a stretch to assume they're enforcing more than the hotel's rules.
> 
> For the record, Chris is right about the compost and that's why throwing meat into there isn't recommended for the average gardener. I'm pretty sure this branch of the Continental has state-of-the-art composting facilities, which helps to supply the kitchen with amazing ultra-local organic produce (just don't think too hard about being what you eat).


	15. Peter and Derek

After fifteen minutes, Peter gives up on trying to ask people whether Stiles is even still in the hotel and just goes to his and Derek’s suite so he can— _with_ authorization—apply the hotel’s own systems to that question (yes, yes, he should’ve done that to begin with but he is _trying_ to be a team player, even if everyone else is reaffirming the folly in that). 

He’s just found the correct application and opened it when Derek barges into the room. “Hey, so this fight Stiles and Lydia are having,” Derek starts.

“Yes, I’m handling it,” Peter says, clicking the helpful ‘locate’ button that pops up.

Derek stops talking. This is not actually a good sign, Peter knows from hard-earned experience with his nephew, but he wants to settle the more pressing matter first, so he attempts to fill in the search parameter box and get the search running. Unfortunately, when he hits the ‘start’ button, he immediately receives an error message that the parameters are not defined.

Peter frowns at the screen. He’s filled out the name and job title areas correctly, so he really doesn’t know how it could be undefined. It isn’t as if there are multiple Stiles Stilinskis who are also heads of operations…he barely suppresses an annoyed noise and swivels around. “Yes?”

“You’re handling it,” Derek says flatly. “What, did Lydia tell you to do that?”

When Peter refills the boxes and resubmits, he gets the same message. He frowns and rereads the captions under each field. “Because obviously, she would have come to her senses on her own, and realized that stalking around taking out her temper on other people wasn’t going to effectively communicate her grievances to Stiles.”

“Well, I don’t know, you usually think you can talk somebody into doing anything,” Derek says, his tone half-sarcastic, half-hating himself for hoping Peter has taken care of it.

Peter clears out the boxes and closes the program, then reopens it—or he attempts to reopen it. He clicks on exactly the same icon as before, but a completely different window opens. The captions are different, the boxes are in different places, and even the color scheme is different. “That’s very flattering of you, nephew. I’ll try to remember it the next time you forget to swap the back plate on the getaway car.”

“I did that once and I was fifteen and.” Derek starts to wheel away, letting out aggravated grunts. Then he turns back, breathing even more heavily in an attempt to compose himself. “Okay. Look. I wasn’t looking for you to fight.”

There is an ‘options’ tab, so Peter clicks on it and surveys the settings. None of them seem relevant, so he clicks back to the main window and…it’s changed on him _again_. “Weren’t you now.”

“Peter, for once can you just—I want them to stop fighting too, okay? I came up about that. I ran into Stiles’ dad and he said…are you going to keep ignoring me?” Derek demands. He gives the empty chair beside Peter a hard shove, sending it into the wardrobe surrounding the workstation and making everything rattle. Then yanks it back out and thumps himself into it.

Rolling his eyes, Peter gives up on the impossible menu and swivels to face his nephew. And has to ask: “You _still_ have those?”

Derek sulks at him. Then, under Peter’s highly unimpressed stare, his eyes flick down to the stack of towels teetering on his knee. His slouch turns faintly defensive. “He gave them to me. You’re the one who always goes on about making good impressions, well, it’ll look great if I just toss them somewhere and he finds out. And given how this place is, he would. Or somebody would tell him.”

“For once you actually are speaking sense,” Peter says after a moment. He pushes his hand onto the keyboard, then takes it back. He’s by no means a technophobe, but neither is he the kind who can bend technology to his will, and he has a feeling this is one of the rare occasions where dealing with his family is the less frustrating option. “What did Stiles’ father say?”

“That he knew they were fighting and would talk to them about it, and to just wait till tomorrow,” Derek says, eyeing Peter a little. “So—”

Peter raises his brows. “You plan to wait it out?”

“Well, I thought the idea was to stay here and make sure it doesn’t blow up, because then we have a better chance of not blowing up with it than back on the East Coast,” Derek snaps, as if Peter’s just confirmed every worst suspicion he has. “What the hell did you and Lydia talk about? Did you just irritate her more?”

“Because needlessly antagonizing people is so very productive,” Peter snorts. “No, as a matter of fact, she told me why Stiles was kept in the dark, and that she hadn’t actually explained that to him. Much more informative than just hearing for the umpteenth time that everybody knows they’re fight—”

“He said more than that, I just wasn’t sure if you cared,” Derek says. He irritably grabs up the towels, handful by handful, and slaps them down on the console instead. “He said he told Lydia not to tell Stiles, and she actually listened to him. I guess she usually doesn’t.”

“That’s hardly a surprise.” The console beeps and Peter glances at it, only to find himself facing an entirely black screen. “Lydia probably saw it as just conveniently approving what she’d already decided, from what she said to me—she didn’t want Stiles involved because she thought he’d be unhappy working on it.”

At first Peter thinks that the workstation has powered off, but as he’s getting out of his seat to check the power connection, he notices that the light at the bottom right corner of the monitor is glowing. He reaches out to tap a key and see if that wakes it up, but then Derek chokes.

No, his nephew isn’t in imminent danger of dying—he’s just ungracefully expressing his disbelief, as usual. “Okay, so pissing him off is better than making him whiny about—what would he whine about, anyway? Doesn’t he like running around shooting at people?”

“Is that what you think?” Peter asks.

He’s expecting another coughing fit, but much to his surprise, Derek actually takes the question seriously. Even more surprisingly, giving his nephew genuine food for thought also seems to do away with Derek’s need to gag.

“Not really, actually. Every time we ran into him before we joined this, he was basically doing that, and he seemed pretty pissed off about it. It took forever before he’d forget about it and actually talk to you,” Derek says after a few seconds’ mulling it over. He slouches a few more inches, but out of absentmindedness, not because he’s in a mood. Then he looks up at Peter. “Actually, it reminded me a lot of you when we’re working.”

Because of the armoire doors flanking them, Peter’s half-standing posture puts him half-over Derek’s torso. Peter’s never been one to turn down a natural advantage when it comes to intimidation, so he allows himself to lean even further over Derek. “Oh, really now. And what part, exactly, reminded you of this?”

“Well, the part where you’re really mad at the shitty level of the people we have to work for,” Derek says. He tilts his head back, meeting Peter’s stare, and then lets out a sarcastic snort. “Yeah, you’re fine with running around killing people, it’s just the whole doing it for ones who don’t deserve it thing. It’s not like I forgot who the hell you are, Peter.”

And then Derek leans up and fists a hand in Peter’s shirt, and pulls Peter down into a rough kiss.

It’s not the time or the place for it; they certainly have other priorities, other people to deal with, and even if they didn’t, Derek knows how much Peter hates it when Derek does that, acts so cavalierly about intimate knowledge. Peter’s nephew drives him nearer to insanity than anyone else, including Peter’s own sister. Talia at least has reasons for her deviancies, even if they’re sometimes (often) poor ones. Derek doesn’t have reasons, merely irrational shifts in temper—and yet he also does know Peter. Irrationally, without any particular timing, he can throw out an offhand comment that slips as neatly as a stiletto through bulletproofed fabric. So…yes, Derek is Peter’s favorite, and yes, that’s not any more irrational (Peter has never, ever claimed to be _completely _free of hypocrisy).__

__Peter kisses back. Then slaps his nephew’s hand off him and removes his tie and unbuttons his shirt before Derek completely ruins either, while Derek makes annoyed noises and settles instead for palming the front of Peter’s trousers. Admittedly, he’s good at that._ _

__He’s less good at picking locations for anything, from corporate espionage to evading rivals to just a place where they can have sex without putting four or five vertebrae in Peter’s back at risk. His chair keeps shifting forwarding and banging his knees into Peter, who suffers through it twice before he finally pulls Derek up out of it by the shirt. Derek, who’d taken Peter’s gasps as encouragement and just stuck his tongue further into Peter’s mouth, puts his hands on Peter’s ribs. Then digs in his nails, arching up so that the top of his thigh presses firmly into Peter’s left inseam, before abruptly dropping to his knees._ _

__Yes, Derek is a lovely sight that way, hot-eyed and hungry, lips peeling back from square white teeth in a snarl that’s half menace, half invitation. He’s also just raked his nails right down to Peter’s waistband and Peter’s already teetering from the damned chair running Derek into him, and Peter’s not a masochist._ _

__Well. All right. Maybe a little, Peter admits, as Derek’s mouth draws in his cock and his fingers clamp roughly onto the chair’s back for support, the burn of the scratches arrowing down his front fading into the broader, deeper heat fanning out from his groin. Maybe he can see the attraction in taking the trouble, putting up with the pain, till it finally mounts that height where the wash of it spreads everywhere and overwhelms everything, that amazing alchemy where he can’t tell—_ _

__“Oh,” says a wide-eyed Stiles, standing in the doorway. “Okay, then, it’s _not_ a blown motherboard…I guess…”_ _

__Derek garbles something, which feels far too pleasurable for when Peter’s attempting to come up with a greeting, and then, for good measure, the man backheels the chair when Peter tries to straighten up. The kick sends the chair skittering out from under Peter’s hands, and while Peter and Derek do avoid having to come up with an explanation for Peter needing stitches on a sexual organ, Peter _does_ topple over his nephew’s shoulder. It is ungraceful. _ _

__It also, Peter discovers when he tries to right himself, somehow has rid him of his trousers. But not his shirt and coat, both of which have flapped back from his chest to twist up under his arms. “Stiles,” he says, doing his best to smile in a non-alarming fashion. “What brings—”_ _

__“Alarm went off,” Stiles says, absently pointing to the console. “I thought you guys were in but wasn’t sure if it was just a mistake, or…”_ _

__His eyes move to Derek, who is flopped under Peter, with more clothes on but less concern about them, or about things like dignity. In fact, Derek shrugs and reaches down to the top of his jeans—the button’s undone but the zipper is still holding, so that while the jeans have slid, they’re still stuck on his hips—and casually unzips himself so he can twist out of them._ _

__The edge of Stiles’ flush jolts an immediate inch further down his neck. His eyes, however, narrow. “…or a try at getting me to come up instead of yelling at more vendors?”_ _

__Derek drops his hands to either side of himself and simply lies there, looking up at Stiles. “Who fucked up now?”_ _

__Stiles’ mouth hangs open for a few seconds. He makes vague jabbing motions in Derek’s direction with his hand, then shakes himself and looks at Peter._ _

__“Yes, he’s like that,” Peter sighs. He pulls his leg out from under Derek, ignoring the other man’s glare, and then finally manages to tug the right fold to get his coat untucked from under his left arm. “Never wants to interrupt what he’s started. Granted, this _can_ be a useful trait when you’re doing surveillance work…anyway, what’s happened? Do you need us—”_ _

__“Well, not like that,” Stiles says, finally pointing to something concrete: Peter’s newly-bared shoulder, since when the coat untucked, it also decided to pull away from Peter’s neck. “I kind of see what Melissa means now. I mean, there’s—we’ve got a—have you heard of a dress code?”_ _

__Peter could take that any number of ways. He could be offended, confused, apologetic. He could point out the provision in their contract that specifically exempts them from the employee uniform requirement. But, he thinks as he takes in the slight bags under Stiles’ eyes, then remembers where he and Derek and Stiles had left off before, none of those approaches seem correct. They’d certainly cover off on proper workplace behavior but that isn’t what needs to be covered off on._ _

__“Yes, but we are in our private rooms,” Peter says. He sits back on his heels, leaving his coat hanging off the one shoulder. “And on a break.”_ _

__“Mostly because nobody’s telling us what we’re supposed to do and we’re getting kind of tired of being in trouble for getting it wrong,” Derek adds, with a quick glance at Peter._ _

__“Oh. Oh, yeah, true,” Stiles says, hunching back. He gives the side of his neck a rub as he looks around, flushing harder with embarrassment. Then his head snaps back around and he looks at Peter and Derek again. “This is…right. Um, wait, somebody’s yelling at you? Who’s doing that? I’ll talk to them because that’s just not cool, that’s not what onboarding is for.”_ _

__“I wouldn’t say people are _yelling_ ,” Peter says hastily, with a sharp nudge of his knee into Derek’s side. His nephew is always overselling it and then accusing _him_ of chewing scenery. “But we, ah, did seem to be stepping into sensitive areas, and we do want to be respectful of the established…hierarchy, so—”_ _

__Stiles grimaces. “Oh. Oh, you mean _me_. At lunch.”_ _

__Peter suppresses his own grimace. Then his irritation, as his nephew dares to prod _him_. “Well, there were several incidents.”_ _

__“But mostly me, ‘cause I’m head of ops and actually your job, and I bit your head off for doing it,” Stiles says, in a knowing, resigned tone. He closes the door behind him, hesitates, and then comes over to the chair. Takes it by one arm and pulls it around Peter and Derek to the workstation. “And, well, also you’re trying to get into my pants, I guess, but—”_ _

__“We kind of already did that,” Derek says._ _

__Peter just about restrains himself from thwapping his nephew. Then leans over and grabs the man as he twists towards Stiles, stopping him just as Stiles turns around to face them. “Ignore him.”_ _

__“Hey,” Derek growls._ _

__Stiles’ gaze shuttles between them. He fidgets with the keyboard, lifting and dropping one edge of it, before his expression finally settles on nervous amusement. “Okay, so, I was gonna give you some cover to be professional, but if we want to play it like that…yeah, but I thought you wanted to stay there, too?”_ _

__As a matter of fact, Peter doesn’t always think the occasion demands a risqué approach, but if that’s where the tide is flowing, he’s certainly not going to swim against it. “We’d never want to hamper your work duties, of course,” he says. “But perhaps we’re not the only ones who might benefit from stepping back from the situation for a moment, and then returning to it fresh? I realize this might fall outside of our scope of work but as you said, we’re in it for a little more than just job satisfaction.”_ _

__“All kinds of satisfaction welcome at your door, I can tell,” Stiles says. The tension is slipping out of him, but he still sits down in the chair rather than joining them on the floor. True, he’s pitched forward towards them with his forearms resting on his knees, his hands dangling not so very far from Derek’s raised knee, but he’s still not quite comfortable enough. “Well, going back to it right now’s not going to make it any better, that’s for sure.”_ _

__“Is it another security thing?” Derek asks._ _

__Peter _is_ going to excuse his nephew from this, for the love of—but before he can do more than tighten his hand on Derek’s shoulder, Stiles snorts. _ _

__“Okay, look, I realize you’re just going on today, but Lydia and I usually aren’t like this,” he says. He’s trying to be humorous but there’s enough of a frustrated edge to it that even he isn’t convinced, twisting his head to the side so that he can rub at his jaw and not look directly at them. “Usually we’re an awesome team. Like, twins separated at birth awesome. Like when I first met her, and I came up with the sodium hydroxide and she figured out how to make it work in a concrete mixer…um, long story, and anyway, what I’m trying to say is…I respect that you’re just trying to look after me, but it’s not really me who needs it here. It’s her.”_ _

__“Her?” Peter says, startled. Which he’d better justify, says Stiles’ cocked brow. “With all due respect, Stiles, Ms. Martin is one of the most capable people I’ve ever met. Talia never would have agreed to have us report into someone else if that wasn’t true, no matter how convincing your father was.”_ _

__Stiles twitches a little. “Um. Okay. Let’s—let’s leave Dad and Talia aside for a sec, ‘cause while my father’s been a grown man the entire time I’ve known him—I mean, by definition, he has to be—”_ _

__“They can do whatever in rooms we aren’t in,” Derek says._ _

__He and Stiles share an understanding look, and then Stiles flashes Derek a relieved grin. “Yeah, exactly,” he says, looking back at Peter and just missing the slight softening in Derek’s posture. “Anyway, I was…I was saying Lydia’s all that and blackmail you didn’t even realize you left behind, but also, she’s got all this _stuff_ to do. I mean, you understand when we say she’s head of security, we mean she’s head of the _hotel_ security, right? She’s not supposed to be doing all of this other stuff too. That’s why my dad wants your family in, that’s the whole point.”_ _

__“If by ‘other stuff,’ you mean securing yourself and your father from threats.” Peter pauses to let Stiles affirm he’s right, then twists himself so that he’s directly in front of Stiles’ chair. “Well, I do have to point out that the head of ops and the GM of a Continental are rather intrinsic to the place.”_ _

__“Yeah, yeah, but that’s just part of the job,” Stiles says in an exasperated voice. “Look, when somebody’s breaking hotel rules or law enforcement’s trying to get in, that’s a security issue. When they’re going after me or Dad, that’s politics and that’s what _we’re_ supposed to handle. I mean, I get it, but it’s just not her problem and…well, she and I will work it out. We always do, sooner or later.”_ _

__It makes sense to Peter. Of course it’s not ideal, but it both makes sense, and is obviously not going to be a clear-cut, easy call to make in all cases. He and Talia have had some similar arguments over the years, over their respective responsibilities in the family, and he does recognize that not all of those arguments were due to her simply not seeing the situation properly, or not trusting his abilities enough. “I doubt she merely sees this as a matter of whose job it is,” he finally offers. “She’s quite protective of you, she’s made that clear.”_ _

__“I think I kind of got that, when she hired two guys who like me enough to forget to be scared of her on my behalf,” Stiles says dryly. Then he sighs and rubs at his face again. “I don’t know, I just—it was Dad too and she knows what I’m like when he’s involved and she just has this way of telling you things that just drives me—yeah. Anyway, I’m sorry your first day was such a shitshow. You’re probably wondering do you really like me _that_ much?”_ _

__“Well, we already filled out the nondisclosure form,” Derek says. “And the organ transplant form. Kind of late to ask that, isn’t it?”_ _

__Peter really doesn’t understand his nephew sometimes. Even self-destructive impulses can’t explain how—how utterly brainless the comments that come out of his mouth can be._ _

__He’s so taken aback that he doesn’t even know where to start with apologizing for him this time, and—but Stiles is laughing. Staring at Derek, eyes wide, but laughing nonetheless. “Then again, maybe she did that because she was mad at me,” he snorts. “Hey, the organ form’s mostly in case _you_ need something, you know? Because we know this job’s pretty fucked-up and do actually try and make sure the benefits keep up?”_ _

__Derek shrugs. “Yeah, okay, we can go with that.”_ _

__Stiles makes a strangled, half-outraged, half-amused noise, and then abruptly plops off the seat onto Derek’s lap. “Oh, my _God_. She was absolutely mad at me. So mad at me, I can’t even—”_ _

__Derek’s only half-raised on one arm anyway, and as soon as Stiles lands on him, he lets that arm slip out from under him and falls back so that Peter’s thigh cushions his head’s landing. It’s not exactly painless for Peter, but…Stiles is already moaning, one of Derek’s hands twisting up under his suit-jacket, while one of _his_ hands has ended up on Peter’s wrist. It closes around that and pulls insistently; Peter assumes that Stiles has mistaken it for some body part of Derek’s, right up till Stiles twists his head away from Derek’s—there’s a _wet_ sucking pop—and leans over and tugs Peter’s hand to him so he can suck a finger in to the last knuckle._ _

__“Ugh, you know what,” Stiles says, looking up. “Yeah, I need to think about something besides liquor licenses. And for the record, this isn’t in the job duties _but_ …you wanna anyway?”_ _

__“Well, I can’t refuse an invitation like that, can—” Peter starts._ _

__And then his damned nephew yanks Peter’s other hand out from under him, so Peter falls heavily onto his side. A sharp pain jolts from elbow up into his shoulder and he rolls over, cursing, and Derek…doesn’t apologize, but he does stick his tongue back in Peter’s mouth._ _

__Then he takes it out, and Stiles sticks his in, crawling onto Peter just as Peter levers himself back up. Stiles’ hands slide under Peter’s flapping shirt, then drag up to Peter’s shoulders as a second pair of hands starts pulling Peter’s waistband loose. Peter swallows down a groan, still half-thinking about scolding his nephew (you can’t let Derek’s attitude go, next he’ll apply that initiative to something likely to get them killed), but then Stiles shimmies down him and wraps one hand around Peter’s cock while Derek takes the head in his mouth and. Well. Priorities._ _

__“I thought we were—distracting _you_ ,” Peter manages, digging his fingers into the carpet as the two of them attend to him._ _

__“Yeah, well. Kind of hard to stop thinking about work. I mean, I’m trying. Changing which work, anyway.” Stiles tickles his fingers up behind Peter’s balls, just till Peter’s thighs seize up, and then rubs a thumb along the underside of Peter’s cock. He stretches back up and sucks at the edges of Peter’s mouth till Peter, surrendering to the groan, turns towards him. “Um, your file doesn’t have your refractory period? And I hate blank spaces so you’re indulging my OCD?”_ _

__Peter snorts. Then twists over, his cock jutting deep into a surprisingly uncomplaining Derek’s mouth as he pins Stiles’ head between his hands and properly kisses the man. When he’s done, Stiles’ eyes are hazed over and the man’s a little too breathless for smart remarks._ _

__“Stiles, you hardly need an _excuse_ to research me,” he tells the man, smiling, before he starts mouthing down the side of Stiles’ neck. About an inch from Stiles’ collarbone, Derek’s tongue does something particularly wicked and Peter has to gasp before he can go on. “But—all means—make it the most attractive job duty we can—”_ _

__“I was trying,” Stiles says, sounding as if he’s speaking from rather far off._ _

__He bobs in front of Peter and Peter shakes his head—but the shake keeps on going, longer than it should, and Peter’s just wondering why he’s not more alarmed by it when he realizes that actually, that would. Is. Is his climax._ _

__Stiles is still looking down at him, grin slowly coming into focus as he pets Peter’s cheek. “You good down there?”_ _

__Peter breathes in, waiting for the world to steady just enough…and then reaches over and rolls Stiles, just as Derek squeezes over Stiles’ legs. “Oh, quite all right. Now, if we could go back to _you_ , since that is supposed to be our primary duty—”_ _

__“I was really _trying_ not to make this weird,” Stiles protests weakly. “I mean—don’t wanna make you feel exploited or anything—”_ _

__“I think that’s the last thing we feel,” Peter says. “It’s certainly not _weird_.”_ _

__He means to pair that with a physical gesture, but as he reaches for Stiles’ fly, Derek’s head gets in the way. A brief flash of irritation passes through Peter, but then he thinks the better of it, looking at Stiles. “I, yeah, I—it’s just—you probably didn’t sign up for _all_ of this,” Stiles says, his expression still full of surprise, but fading slowly to pleased. “I know they just pitched this as—didn’t mention all the backroom bullshit, I know that now and—and—that’s very distracting?”_ _

__Derek looks up. “Supposed to be,” he says, and then he licks Stiles’ cock._ _

__“I know,” Peter sighs, as Stiles sucks in his breath. He puts his hand out and pushes at Derek’s head, then grips the man’s hair when that doesn’t shift Derek enough. “I know, he is, isn’t he?”_ _

__“Hey, you’re just as—” Derek says, snapping his head up._ _

__Peter catches his mouth, holding him by the hair till he starts to sag into it, and then directs them both down to Stiles’ cock. Stiles starts to say something at that point, but quickly chokes it off as their mouths envelop him._ _

__What Peter can say about Derek, the man does read him well—it’s just Derek’s epic failure to translate that into sensible actions most days that irritates him. But when Derek does decide to follow Peter’s lead, as he does now…he works down to lap at Stiles’ balls while Peter lavishes attention over the head of Stiles’ cock. Then rises back up the shaft, lips bumping into Peter’s as Peter swallows the head and edges past it, their combined efforts sending Stiles into an unintelligible babble that’s rapidly speeding up. When Derek does that, they do work wonderful, terrible things together._ _

__“Holy,” is all Stiles can say for a good minute afterward, staring slackly at the ceiling. “Holy. Okay. Holy…”_ _

__“So stop worrying about us, because maybe we didn’t know everything about this place, but nobody blackmailed us into taking the job,” Derek says. He shifts up onto his elbows, facing Stiles, then worms down one hand to absently adjust his erection. “And honestly, it’s not the craziest thing we’ve ever done. Just it’d maybe be good if you and Lydia told each other you weren’t just trying to piss each other off?”_ _

__Stiles blinks twice, slow and forceful. Then he tilts his head to look at Derek. “You,” he says, frowning. He pauses, then lets out a startled laugh. “Okay, right, you are…well, okay, she wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t…if you didn’t know what you were doing. Internal Management. Okay, then. That’s…yeah, I know, I should do that, and—”_ _

__The workstation emits a horrendous screech. Then, while they’re all reeling back, half-deafened by it, the monitor abruptly comes to life, displaying a single blinking message: _Stiles. The brandy. Coming up.__ _

__“—the _hell_ can’t people understand that not siding with you doesn’t mean we’re _against_ you, it means we’re not picking and if you try and make us, we’re _gonna_ go after you,” Stiles says, wide-eyed, windmilling arms propelling him backwards onto his feet. He starts to lose his balance and grabs at the back of the chair Derek pushes at him; his eyes fall on Peter and Derek and he freezes, hints of that stiff concierge façade coming over him…and then he twists around and windmills some more as he yells at the workstation. “Why would it seem like a good idea to cut off your local Continental’s _liquor supply_? In what universe does that not mean immediate and disproportional retaliation?”_ _

__“What—” Derek starts, rolling onto one knee._ _

__Then he whips around, a beat slower than Peter—who admittedly has the better angle to the door—in yanking out a gun and aiming it at Lydia, who stops halfway through the doorway with a look on her face as if she thinks it alone could stop any bullet (Peter isn’t entirely certain it wouldn’t, to be honest)._ _

__She stares at them for a second, then turns towards Stiles. “Really?”_ _

__“What? Oh, look, I mean, I was on break!” Stiles says, flushing. He glances down at himself, then yanks his shirt-tails over his groin. Nearly topples over again as he frantically glances around, and then he spots the towels Derek’s carried all day and grabs them in such a way that one ends up scrunched in front of his groin while the rest scatter haphazardly but coincidentally over Peter and Derek’s indecent parts. “People told me to! Erica threatened to lock me in the office again for a nap if I didn’t stop scaring the bartenders and hey what the hell they cut us off? They _cut us off_?”_ _

__“Who threatened you?” Peter says sharply, stopping in the middle of putting his gun away._ _

__“Oh, that’s part of your Internal Management protocol, which you haven’t been training on so it’s still Erica’s job,” Lydia says, just before giving them a dismissive flip of her hair. “At least one of you remembered the towels. Stiles can’t go wreak havoc on the people threatening our vendors if he’s pantsless.”_ _

__Stiles makes a face at Lydia, and then in the middle of it, he stiffens in a way that has nothing to do with embarrassment or his work ethic. Likewise, her icy stare immediately gains the brittleness of a defensive air._ _

__“Yeah, so I’m on this again?” he says, much more calmly, but also in a much flatter tone._ _

__Lydia tightens her crossed arms over her chest and Peter suppresses a sigh and tucks a towel around himself, getting ready to push himself up between them. “Well, it’s ops,” Lydia suddenly says. She presses her lips together. “Is that in dispute?”_ _

__“They’re gonna die,” Stiles says, sounding a little uncertain. “I mean, sure, it’s not a _rule_ rule that you can’t threaten a Continental vendor but if that messes with our business, we just can’t…so they’re gonna die. So that’s kind of…security…”_ _

__“Just because somebody’s dying—” Lydia starts._ _

__“It’s not like I _want_ to take over—” _ _

__“Which is my point—”_ _

__“You just overdo it all the time,” they both say at the same time, in nearly identical frustrated tones._ _

__Peter…eases back down, and then takes Derek by the shoulder to make sure his nephew won’t interrupt either. Derek’s been—unusually, actually—good with his timing for the past hour, but Peter hasn’t survived this many ambushes counting on that lasting._ _

__“Oh,” Stiles is the first to say, relaxing a little. He blinks, scruffs at his head, and then turns back to Lydia and blinks again. “But you got me bodyguards to date!”_ _

__“Well, that was _after_ the robotic arms in the garage,” Lydia says._ _

__“Which was because you literally violate our double-shift policy _every week_ ,” Stiles says. “ _Also_ , I know you didn’t actually make it to New York Fashion Week because you were cleaning up that thing in Brooklyn for Dad.”_ _

__Lydia rolls her eyes. “And Scott having to crush three guest’s cars with a bulldozer in order to disable those arms when they went haywire really created less work for security.”_ _

__Stiles is straining for something, everyone can see it, but eventually, he shuts his mouth. Then shrugs noncommittally._ _

__“I know, I know, it was just a thought. Possibly even a good one,” Lydia says, with another, distinctly fonder eye-roll. “But what would cut down on my need to do that, if you could just make sure that you’re secure one shift a week—”_ _

__“By…being continuously in a secure location within the hotel and not trying to break out of it or otherwise tinker with the security on it?” Stiles finishes, with a growing note of amusement in his voice. He glances at Peter and Derek. “One shift?”_ _

__“Minimum, obviously,” Lydia says dryly. “Their work schedule hasn’t been approved yet.”_ _

__Derek lets out an annoyed sound. “Well, who told you just once a week, that’s really—”_ _

__“If it’s Talia you’re waiting on, I’ll speak to her,” Peter says, once his hand is firmly glued over Derek’s mouth. “I have no doubt that we’ll be able to work out something to accommodate everyone’s needs.”_ _

__“Well, it’s why we hired you,” Lydia sniffs. Then she turns back to Stiles. “So the liquor—”_ _

__“Look, if you think it’s better for your team, okay, just…just let me know,” Stiles says, agreeable but with a lingering hard edge, the kind that comes from being unsure of your welcome. “I just want to know where the problems are, and that everybody’s okay, or if not, who needs the help. And I mean _everyone_. You too.”_ _

__For a moment Lydia is silent. Then—there’s no discernable change in her expression that Peter can detect, but suddenly the gathering tension in the air disappears, and a broad smile comes over Stiles’ face. “I know,” she finally says. Makes a great show of casually pulling out her phone to check it. “I’ll deal with the vendor but someone needs to handle the extortionists tonight, and we’re booked. Except for Peter and Derek there, and they haven’t gone through the vendor due diligence training yet anyway so they aren’t authorized for that part.”_ _

__“Okay, sure, I’m free.” Then Stiles frowns and reaches into a pocket that’s not there. He curses and stoops and digs in his discarded trousers, then comes up with his phone. “Nope, free, let me just get dressed. Oh, so…”_ _

__“We’ve available,” Peter says, smiling himself. “Very much so.”_ _

__* * *_ _

__Derek thinks he did a pretty nice job, considering he’s the only one of the three who hasn’t come yet, and it looks like he’s just going to have to live with it. And look, it’s not that he’s a selfish asshole who only thinks about his own needs, but that kind of thing is—it’s not easy to ignore, is all he’s saying._ _

__But he is, because his new supervisor is no longer in a cold war over the hotel with Stiles, who’s relaxed enough that Derek actually thinks they’ll get some dating in between looking out for him, and even Peter seems to not be annoyed with anybody. Which would be a hell of a lot for anybody to get done, in Derek’s opinion._ _

__So yeah, when he leaves the other three discussing the best way to relocate five bodies and two trucks of liquor without violating health codes and ducks into the bathroom, only to get jumped, he feels screwed over. At least a little bit._ _

__“Oh, honestly, Derek, it’s as if you don’t enjoy it when I surprise you,” Peter purrs, pressing Derek up against the wall._ _

__“Yeah, well, I don’t—”_ _

__Peter sticks his tongue in Derek’s mouth and his hands down Derek’s jeans, because Derek has them pulled back up but not zipped yet. His knee hikes up between Derek’s legs, trapping Derek’s cock between it and his fingers, and he presses hard enough that Derek hisses and clamps down on Peter’s arms. Should’ve kept pushing him off, Derek realizes, just as Peter’s fingers start pressing up and down his cock, not jerking it off so much as rolling it off, long rolling swipes that stroke up groan after groan from Derek’s chest._ _

__He’d been going back down but he’s up again, up and hard and needing to breathe but Peter won’t take off his mouth. Derek has to fight for the space and then Peter squeezes back in, licking the air he’s just won out again and—and _fuck_ , but making him like it too._ _

__So Derek does come. Embarrassingly fast. At least, it would be embarrassing, if it didn’t feel so good Derek doesn’t really give a shit._ _

__“And for once I approve of being surprised by you,” his uncle’s saying, holding him up as he tries to blink the spots out of his vision. “Then again, I do recall telling you a few times that irritating someone can be a very effective tactic in getting them to do what you want them to do. I knew all of that advice wasn’t going into a _complete_ black hole.”_ _

__“What?” Derek mutters._ _

__“Just remember I also told you nobody survives with just one party trick, Derek. Especially after someone’s figured it out,” Peter says. Smirks. Pats Derek on the cheek, gives Derek’s shirt a tug down Derek’s stomach, and then he strolls out of the room._ _

__Derek…decides he’s just going to focus on what he needs in order to not fall over. So he catches his breath, and then he goes to the sink and cleans himself up. Catches his breath again, tidies his clothes, and steps out of the bathroom._ _

__“Oh, hey, they’re still here, they just moved over to the living room,” Scott says. He’s standing in the middle of the room with a bucket of cleaning supplies, pulling on latex gloves. He seems to realize what that looks like because he gives the workstation a quick nod. “I was cleaning up another mess when Lydia messaged me and, um, the techs check all the connections once a week and it just—it’s kind of—not that fair to them…”_ _

__“We didn’t do it on _that_ ,” Derek says._ _

__Scott shrugs as he bends over. He pokes around in the bucket before selecting a spray bottle. “Well, just in case,” he says. “Messes get into places you never realize till you start looking, and if you don’t catch them right away, they get even worse. It’s why I always keep a towel around, you know? Just handier. Otherwise you have to use your sleeve or something like that, and then you’re part of the mess.”_ _

__“Okay,” Derek says after a long moment._ _

__Unperturbed, Scott spritzes the workstation and then starts wiping it down. Derek looks at him, then takes a step away. Then pauses, thinking over what Scott had just said. Maybe he’s having a moment of insanity, but…_ _

__“—not a robot!” comes Stiles’ voice from the other room. “It’s AI! Totally different!”_ _

__“It’s still connected to enough C4 to blow out an entire room,” Lydia says. “That’s not ‘closed for repairs,’ that’s ‘closed for expansion.’ We don’t need another artwork bay, Stiles.”_ _

__“I think they’ll be quite dead in any case,” Peter says. “Does it really matter how?”_ _

__There’s a silent beat, and then: “ _Yes_ ,” Lydia and Stiles say together, with the kind of emphasis that makes Derek look around for the psycho eyes._ _

__Instead he sees Scott’s bucket again. He thinks about it, then looks at Scott…who’s too busy running a sponge through the keyboard keys. Derek thinks about it for another second, then grimaces and just ducks down and steals a towel out of the bucket. Hell if it’s really a good idea, but honestly, he doesn’t know that it’s _not_. Not around here, anyway._ _

__Anyway. Can’t make it worse, he figures._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bulletproof doesn't mean proof against everything, and actually, the same qualities that make something effectively protective against bullets tend to make them weak against points or edges.
> 
> As anyone who's ever worked in the hospitality or the restaurant industry can tell you, a liquor license can make or break your business. Being able to provide your customers with a steady supply of booze is right up there with heat and running water as a basic utility function.
> 
> Revised Internal Management protocol, by the way, is for Erica to lock Stiles in with Derek or Peter, whichever is around.


End file.
